To keep this as short as possible, I received an MBP 2017 running High Sierra 10.13.5 from one of my users that we didn't manage yet (no backups). I began the process of enabling FileVault and then started downloading Mojave from the App Store. The ISP is 1Gbps so it was mere minutes before it was ready to install Mojave; however, it didn't give me any warning that Mojave couldn't be installed because of an ongoing FileVault encryption, which I thought was odd but figured maybe there was a way to do both, so I just selected install. I stepped away and came back and it failed to install, still on 10.13.15 but when inputting the password on the login screen I get the prohibitory symbol. I've tried the following:
1. Boot to Recovery using command R. What's strange is that I can't mount the HD when I use Disk Utility even though I have the right password. And the first time I input the password it wiggles indicating it's wrong, but I hit unlock a 2nd time and the dialog box disappears, indicating it’s the right password.
2. Booting to Internet Recovery using command + ctrl + R is more successful; I'm able to mount the HD with just one password try! I thought this was the end of it, that I'd somehow be able to open a Finder window or Terminal session to copy over my files to an external HDD, but no! There is no obvious way to copy files in Recovery mode that I can see. This seems stupid and insane to me, don't know if it's related to the improved T2 chip security. I would love for someone to tell me I’m wrong and that I can copy the user profile folder in Recovery once the SSD is mounted.
3. Target disk mode using two Macs. Basically on the Mac I tried with everything is grayed out and I can't mount or do anything useful in the Disk Utility. Argh.
4. Choosing to reinstall the OS in Recovery is not available, the message I get is something along the lines of “Your disk is still being encrypted”. Something to that effect.
I've tried the recommendations in this thread here; https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/turn-off-filevault-with-terminal.2111443/. Unfortunately those commands don't work either in normal Recovery or Internet Recovery mode. It doesn’t recognize any sudo commands, any fdesetup commands, etc. Feel free to tell me I’m doing something wrong there.
My last question is this; is there a way to boot into some sort of environment that allows this encryption to complete? Last night I decided to just leave the MBP on the login screen, but it doesn't appear to have made any difference with the length of the progress bar when attempting to load the user profile. The bar still gets about 10% of the way through and then prohibitory symbol.
Any help is greatly appreciated. And no, clean installing isn’t an option, would have done that a long time ago if it had been backed up and managed by me.
1. Boot to Recovery using command R. What's strange is that I can't mount the HD when I use Disk Utility even though I have the right password. And the first time I input the password it wiggles indicating it's wrong, but I hit unlock a 2nd time and the dialog box disappears, indicating it’s the right password.
2. Booting to Internet Recovery using command + ctrl + R is more successful; I'm able to mount the HD with just one password try! I thought this was the end of it, that I'd somehow be able to open a Finder window or Terminal session to copy over my files to an external HDD, but no! There is no obvious way to copy files in Recovery mode that I can see. This seems stupid and insane to me, don't know if it's related to the improved T2 chip security. I would love for someone to tell me I’m wrong and that I can copy the user profile folder in Recovery once the SSD is mounted.
3. Target disk mode using two Macs. Basically on the Mac I tried with everything is grayed out and I can't mount or do anything useful in the Disk Utility. Argh.
4. Choosing to reinstall the OS in Recovery is not available, the message I get is something along the lines of “Your disk is still being encrypted”. Something to that effect.
I've tried the recommendations in this thread here; https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/turn-off-filevault-with-terminal.2111443/. Unfortunately those commands don't work either in normal Recovery or Internet Recovery mode. It doesn’t recognize any sudo commands, any fdesetup commands, etc. Feel free to tell me I’m doing something wrong there.
My last question is this; is there a way to boot into some sort of environment that allows this encryption to complete? Last night I decided to just leave the MBP on the login screen, but it doesn't appear to have made any difference with the length of the progress bar when attempting to load the user profile. The bar still gets about 10% of the way through and then prohibitory symbol.
Any help is greatly appreciated. And no, clean installing isn’t an option, would have done that a long time ago if it had been backed up and managed by me.