4TB External Drive is Stuck while decrypting

[andromedaan]

I have a 4TB External Drive from Seagate. It is filled with 3,5 TB of content that I don't intent to loose. When I first started using it, I had it encrypted with password-protection. Idiot that I am, I right clicked the drive in Finder and selected Decrypt, I thought it would speed the disk up.

Now, the drive is very slow and hardly responding, perhaps because it's still decrypying. Via a terminal command (diskutil cs list) I could see the progress of the decryption. 4 hours ago, it was at 71%. Now it's still stuck at 71%. I am thinking something might be wrong? The drive often does not mount correctly, I will see the disk in Finder but it will take 5 minutes (or forever) before the files are loaded. Sometimes just connecting the drive is enough to crash my MacBook Pro 2017.

What can my next step be? I want to secure my files. Any help towards the right direction is welcome.

 

[Fishrrman]

"What can my next step be? I want to secure my files. Any help towards the right direction is welcome."

Well, such are the hazards of using encryption.
When it works, it's great.
But when it STOPS working...?
That can make the data on the drive... well... lost and inaccessible.

A pointed question:
If you had a drive with 3.5tb of "content that I don't intend to lose", why didn't you also maintain a backup of that drive? You may need it now.

Can you cancel the decryption?
Or re-enable it?

 

[andromedaan]

A pointed question:
If you had a drive with 3.5tb of "content that I don't intend to lose", why didn't you also maintain a backup of that drive? You may need it now.

Can you cancel the decryption?
Or re-enable it?

I did try to cancel the decryption, as it is stuck on 71%, by using the terminal command "diskutil cs revert disk3".
But that returned "Error: -69650: This disk is already reverting"