Encrypted Time Machine Backup taking so LONG!!

[jmac0408]

I waited about 24 hours for 13% of my new drive to encrypt. I wanted a faster solution.

The answer to this question seems to be here, but it's not all in one place. Here's how I fixed the "slow encryption" issue.

a) assuming you've got a new drive, or even a new partition for your backup and no information you need to keep on the drive.


do the following:

0. Open Disk Utility and unmount the disk.

1. Click the "erase button" and re-format the drive as a Journaled, Encrypted Volume. (takes only a couple mins)

2. Go back into Time machine Preferences and start a new backup on the drive. All of the "encryption time" will be removed and you're just backing up the information.

I wasted hours "waiting" for the encryption, but with the few small steps above solved the problem.

[doublepost=1544749096][/doublepost]Gavin-t:

Implemented your instructions and everything seems to have been successful!!
Can’t thank you enough for your resolutions and for saving me hours of upset and frustration!!

 

[Shaf1070]

I made the mistake of encrypting my 3TB drive. I had a heck of a time with it - first formatted it to the new APFS - copied all my backups to it, then ... found that timemachine won't work with that. So ... formatted, copied all my data over, started time machine, chose to encrypt via time machine and I'm looking at weeks of encrypting - but at least it backs up during. I should have formatted encrypted then just do a normal time machine backup. Oh well, I'll have my laptop on with the drive connected at work so it speeds it up a bit more.

I did the same thing with a 2 TB external drive. If I just let it run (probably for a week at the rate it’s going), will it take this long every time I backup my data? Or is it just this initial encryption that takes so long?

 

[chaseholden]

Holy s**t, that's it! I spent the whole evening googling this issue without finding any clear instructions or guidelines on this (neither from Apple, nor from any of the "expert" publications) – and was frustrated at seeing either an overly long encryption process or an overly long decryption process with TimeMachine, depending on which encryption was set on. When all along the key was to have encryption on both on the file system level AND in TimeMachine.

Thanks so much for posting this, saved the rest of my evening (and actually days worth of en/decrypting time)! (And FU Apple for not providing a clear instruction on this!)

• There IS a separate option for encrypting the actual backup using Time Machine.
• Time Machine will ask when turning Time Machine on for the first time if you want to encrypt the backup itself.
• This is in addition to the designated Time Machine disk which itself is encrypted upon selecting the drive and disk to be formatted for Time Machine. The format it uses is HFS+ MacOS Extended Encrypted Journaled.
• Note that encrypting the backup significantly adds to the backup time as it encrypts the file, although the load to the CPU is minimal.
• It is DiskUtility process performing the encryption. To monitor progress using Terminal, type command: diskutil cs list

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-a-backup-disk-set-encryption-options-mh11421/mac

 

[BigMcGuire]

I did the same thing with a 2 TB external drive. If I just let it run (probably for a week at the rate it’s going), will it take this long every time I backup my data? Or is it just this initial encryption that takes so long?

Sorry for not seeing this earlier. It will eventually encrypt the entire drive - not during each backup. It is the initial that takes so long. Better is to just start over, format the drive encrypted, then do backups (they'll be on the encrypted disk this way) - no need to have TM encrypt an unencrypted drive byte by byte.

 

[PJL500]

I had this problem. But easy fix for me. It was encrypting for days. Stuck at 26%. I shut down, restarted, reset PRAM, logged in and TM said the most recent backup as normal - about an hour b4 shutdown. Working normally since. Weird.