Turning off filevault

[cmm]

How long will it take to turn off filevault? My home dir is ~35 gigs...

Thanks!

 

[cmm]

Oh specs:

ibook

1.42ghz
1 gig ram

 

[SilentPanda]

I'm not sure but you could just create a 2nd account, copy a decent amount of the data out of your filevault (or all your data for that matter) and then delete the data from Filevault... not sure if it would be quicker.

If I were you I would just start it before I went to bed. Especially on a night when you know you're going to be out the next day... 8 hours should probably be fine (don't know for sure though) but 16 hours (work or school) should take care of it. At worst you might be without your iBook for an evening...

Make sure you have the same amount of space free on your HD though. 35GB filevault will take at least 35GB of space free.

 

[cmm]

UGH. I only have 2.5 gigs available. So there is no way I can turn off filevault now?

 

[SilentPanda]

UGH. I only have 2.5 gigs available. So there is no way I can turn off filevault now?

This knowledge base article is for 10.3 but I'm sure it applies to 10.4.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=152354

I would suggest only using filevault for files you actually want to be secure... even then you might use an encrypted disc image instead.

 

[cmm]

I just read the file: I don't have the same amount of disc space so I'm basically SOL, eh?

 

[cmm]

If I move my music and movie folder out of my home dir, will it still be encrypted after I turn filevault off and I then migrate it back to the home dir?

 

[SilentPanda]

If I move my music and movie folder out of my home dir, will it still be encrypted after I turn filevault off and I then migrate it back to the home dir?

If you move the files out of your home directory (let's say into your applications directory temporarily) they will not be encrypted anymore. If those are your two largest directories you might consider moving them there and then turning filevault off.

 

[cmm]

If there's nothing in my home dir, how long do you think it will take to turn it off?

 

[cmm]

It wont copy because there's not enough space......

 

[SilentPanda]

It wont copy because there's not enough space......

Don't copy the data. Move the data.

 

[cmm]

I tried mv and it's still happening

 

[will5234]

ITS A NIGHTMARE !!!!!!!! I am attempting to resell 2 of my iMacs and I have to DISABLE FILE VAULT on both.....

The first one took 4 days of being on constantly 1TB hard drive... and the 2nd one has more content on it so its taking around 9 days 1TB... I started them both at same time... ALL I WANT TO DO is MASTER RESET EVERYTHING to sell em on eBay and put clean macOS install on it.... but it refuses to let me until "decryption is complete"

 

[NoBoMac]

You don't have to decrypt the drive to re-install os. If you have a USB installer, can boot off that then reformat the drive and install to it. Or if you only have a recovery partition, do this:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/erasing-filevault-2-volume-prior-to-reinstalling-os.2022052/

Since the drive was encrypted, any data left on the machine will remain encrypted and get overwritten as part of the install.

 

[will5234]

Is there a way to stop the decrypting of the file vault? Because it has slowed down my iMac considerably by 60% and I still need to use it daily for work

 

[NoBoMac]

Re: stopping encryption/decryption. Not that I know of. I believe I've seen some people claim some instructions on the interwebs on how to do that, but imo, would not try it as probably will put the system into some odd state (ie. half encrypted, half not) that will make the machine unusable until the drive is wiped and os re-installed.

 

[komatsu]

Re: stopping encryption/decryption. Not that I know of. I believe I've seen some people claim some instructions on the interwebs on how to do that, but imo, would not try it as probably will put the system into some odd state (ie. half encrypted, half not) that will make the machine unusable until the drive is wiped and os re-installed.

Sage advice - you could be left in right limbo with a half-encrypted disk. Better let the decryption process run its course.

(BTW, does anyone know if applications like Sophos SafeGuard are better / worse than FileVault regarding decryption?)

 

[DeltaMac]

You COULD just turn the Mac off.
Boot to an external macOS installer.
Erase the internal drive. That will remove everything, encrypted or not.
Then reinstall macOS. When the system reboots, and you get the new user setup, just choose to shut down from the menu. That will leave a completely fresh install, and the new owner can continue on with the new user setup.

Sophos SafeGuard uses FileVault 2 as the basis for its Mac support, so would be the same.
From Sophos system requirements page:

SafeGuard Disk Encryption for Mac as of version 6.10 builds on Mac OS X's integrated FileVault 2 encryption technology. It uses FileVault 2 to encrypt the entire hard disk, so that your data is safe even if the computer is lost or stolen.