FileVault error

[richard.mac]

today i wanted to turn on FileVault on my MBP and a dialogue box came up telling me i dont have enough space free on my hard drive and that i need 4076 GBs free to create an encrytped disk image. well no hard drive in existance has this much free space! so i guess theres an error somewhere... how do i fix it?

 

[livingfortoday]

Run Disk Utility and verify your disk, you may need to repair it. Also, repair permissions.

 

[EricNau]

I've seen this error once before (with that exact amount of required space). Unfortunately, I never found the answer. ...It's very strange.

 

[Benjamin]

That is just a bug in computing the amount of space needed to decrypt and replaced your current FileVaulted disk image. To turn off/on FileVault you need at least the amount your home folder is plus I would guess 4-8GB of space free on your harddrive. Remember OS X has to copy everything from the disk image to your harddrive and then delete the disk image to turn FileVault off.

Some other thread about this.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1908.html
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/263046/

 

[Shanesan]

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/300086/

Same issue. It's a bug, not a permissions thing, not nothing. It just means you need more room to turn it off, but of course not 4000GB worth.

I suggest you empty your recycle bin, restart the computer, have it do its "compression" thing it loves to do and you never want to do because it takes AGES, and then try again.

 

[richard.mac]

sorry for the late reply forgot to check the post.
yeh i dont have enough free space left thanks Benjamin. i need 40 gb free when i only have 20gb. so looks like i wont be using filevault (although i use encrypted disk images to store private docs )

 

[SC68Cal]

Here's a suggestion: Move your music folder out of your home folder (move it into /Users/Shared for example) then turn on FileVault. Once it's finished creating the encrypted home folder and such, drag it back into your home folder.