Converting encrypted hard drives to APFS?

[Doc69]

All my data hard drives, both internal and external on my MacPro5,1, are MacOS encrypted. Will I be able to just convert them from Mac OS Extended to APFS, or will I need to format and erase them?

Also, is it advisable to convert all my data drives to APFS, including backup drives?

 

[DeltaMac]

Spinning hard drives? probably not too important to convert those over to APFS.

 

[mikecwest]

I think, unless it has changed, you have to unencrypt the drive, convert to APFS, then re-encrypt them. It is a VERY lengthy process, and slow, especially if you are using a spinning hard drive.

 

[Khashoggi]

You don’t need to unencrypt first. Worked fine for a 2012 fusion drive Mac that had FileVault on to convert to apfs through recovery console disk utility.

Same password requirements during boot.

This was as of a beta 8 install.

 

[mikecwest]

You don’t need to unencrypt first. Worked fine for a 2012 fusion drive Mac that had FileVault on to convert to apfs through recovery console disk utility.

Same password requirements during boot.

This was as of a beta 8 install.

Oh, in the initial beta of High Sierra you did have to....That is nice if it is no longer required.

 

[Doc69]

You don’t need to unencrypt first. Worked fine for a 2012 fusion drive Mac that had FileVault on to convert to apfs through recovery console disk utility.

Thanks. However, I would appreciate if someone could confirm if this is also the case for internal and external non-OS drives. A have three new 8TB drives that I need to encrypt, but since that process takes a few days for each drive, if I have to unencrypt them before converting to APFS, then I'll postpone the encryption until after I have upgraded to High Sierra.

 

[ZapNZs]

I do not personally believe it is advisable at all at this point to convert production systems or backup systems to APFS if productivity is important to livelihood. Apple forcing APFS on the HS release for flash-based Macs is a little scary...

"I'm genuinely concerned about what kind of results we can expect if millions of users charge head-on into this infant filesystem on their production Macs."

 

[nutmac]

APFS Encrypted with FileVault is very unstable. Upgrade from beta 7 to beta 8 borked my MacBook Pro. So I did a clean install and while everything is seemingly fine, fsck is reporting issues, FileVault status is reporting issues, and Disk Utility locks up.

 

[LarryJoe33]

I would not convert backup drives to APFS. I would leave them HFS. More flexibility and compatibility options when you need to restore.

 

[lederermc]

All my data hard drives, both internal and external on my MacPro5,1, are MacOS encrypted. Will I be able to just convert them from Mac OS Extended to APFS, or will I need to format and erase them?

Also, is it advisable to convert all my data drives to APFS, including backup drives?

I installed High Sierra on a late 2013 MacBookPro(r) with file vault2 encryption without any issues. No need to unencrypted the encrypt.