Chris Carey

Time Machine Encryption Slow Takes Too Long

Time Machine encryption can take literally days to complete. How do you speed this up?

The problem is here: It is common and logical to follow the pattern:

  • Format a drive “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”
  • Select that disk in Time Machine and select “Encrypt backups”.

Time Machine will perform the first backup (unencrypted) on the drive, then after it finishes, it will begin this long process of encrypting the drive. This is the routine that can take multiple days, even if your first backup was only a few gigabytes. This sucks.

The faster technique is in Disk Utility to:

  • Format the drive “Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)” (which only takes a few seconds)
  • Select that disk in Time Machine and select “Encrypt backups”.

Time machine will perform the backup on the encrypted disk and will be done immediately after.

Hope this saves you some time!

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41 responses to “Time Machine Encryption Slow Takes Too Long”

  1. Musawar Khan Avatar
    Musawar Khan

    This is an awesome technique and saved me a lot of time.

    Thanks for sharing this tip

    Reply
  2. Pudens Avatar
    Pudens

    Thank you also for this tip. A huge win over Time Machine’s default behavior.

    Reply
  3. FB Yaspam Avatar
    FB Yaspam

    After 3 calls to Apple Support to no avail, you solved the problem!
    Thank you!

    Reply
  4. James Avatar
    James

    I did as you suggested and encrypted first but it still tries to encrypt the disk every time I do another backup… and yet it seems to be on track to take multiple days to finish.

    Reply
    1. Soami Avatar
      Soami

      This has been my experience too.

      Reply
    2. Clayton Blackburn Avatar
      Clayton Blackburn

      Yes. The encryption process has been in progress for about two weeks. Seems to be stuck at 39%.

      Reply
      1. Duncryption Avatar
        Duncryption

        In finder, eject disc as normal. The encryption process stops.

        Reply
      2. Sean Avatar
        Sean

        Same here.

        Reply
  5. Chris Avatar
    Chris

    Thx for sharing buddy!

    Reply
  6. neonate Avatar
    neonate

    My problem – I created a Time Machine using the “common/logical” method and backed up 800GB on A 4 TB HD – after 24 hrs it was still encrypting and was only about 25% complete.

    Then I found you article . I reformatted the HD and created a Time Machine using the method that you suggested. Worked great. Only 4 hours for entire backup/encryption.

    Thank you so much for sharing.

    Reply
  7. Vasily Avatar
    Vasily

    It works! Thank you, Chris! That post saved me after two days following a wrong path mentioned at the beginning.

    Reply
  8. Chuck Avatar
    Chuck

    I’m having the issue but don’t want to format and encrypt, because I have a lot of old computer data also on that disk. When it eventually finishes encryption will future backups be faster? Or is it this style of encryption every backup? It’s been multiple days and at encrypting 48% currently for a 1TB drive -> 4TB external drive.

    Reply
    1. Chris Carey Avatar
      Chris Carey

      Chuck, If you just continue then yes when it eventually finishes, future backups will be much faster. That “encrypting drive” process only happens once.

      Reply
      1. Rob Reinglast Avatar
        Rob Reinglast

        Sorry to dig up this post after after many months, but I’m currently having this issue, and like Chuck, I don’t want to encrypt the volume. In my case it’s because I will be serving the Time Machine volume over my wifi, after the initial back up, by plugging the external hard drive containing the volume into my wireless router, but the router doesn’t support reading encrypted HFS+ volumes, therefore if I encrypt the volume I won’t be able to share it via my wireless router.

        I’m wondering a couple things, though:

        1. I’m using an external hard drive with a 5400RPM disk. Is that contributing to the slowness? Would the initial Time Machine encryption be faster using an fast hard drive or swapping it for an external SSD with faster read/write speeds?

        2. If so, could I possibly create the initial encrypted Time Machine back up on my external SSD, then move it over to an empty volume on my external hard drive and use it on the external hard drive going forward?

        Reply
  9. Danielle Avatar
    Danielle

    So if I already have a backup on my external hard drive, when I go into Disk Utility under “External,” Am I deleting the name of backup itself (sub tab)?

    Reply
    1. Ant Avatar
      Ant

      You’re deleting your back up. 🙁

      Reply
  10. Bill Avatar
    Bill

    Thank You, Chris. Exactly what I needed to know.

    Reply
  11. Gary Avatar
    Gary

    I created my TM backup disk as Journaled and Encrypted, but TM still insists on a multi-day encryption process. Why is it trying to encrypt data on an encrypted disk?! Seems to work for other, but not for me for some reason.

    Reply
    1. Howard Avatar
      Howard

      And there’s James and Soami Who also seem to have followed the instructions and are getting a protracted back up.

      So Chris what might they be doing wrong so that the rest of us don’t also do it and fall a fowl the goal?

      And also is there a way instead to just put a password on the TM external drive or on those back up folders?

      Reply
  12. Roger Bakke Avatar
    Roger Bakke

    Just wondering, if the disk is encrypted initially before taking the first back up, what is the point of selecting “encrypt” in the Time Machine setup as the disk is already encrypted? Are you not double-dipping?

    Reply
    1. Duncryption Avatar
      Duncryption

      This is the stage I’m at. I’ve stopped the slow encryption, reformatted with Disk Utility, now in TM prefs have selected disk – but should I untick Encrypt Backups’?

      Reply
  13. Jonas Avatar
    Jonas

    Thank you so much! SOOOO much faster than doing it the automatic Time Machine way.

    Reply
  14. Jake Sanders Avatar
    Jake Sanders

    I plugged in my External Hard Drive for a routine backup. My issue was that it was my first time taking a backup on my new computer (I had transferred my data over previously). It’s been stuck encrypting the backup disk for over 24 hours. How would I go about “killing” the in progress encryption, reformatting, then setting up the disk again?

    Reply
    1. Duncryption Avatar
      Duncryption

      This is what I want to do too. I’m 24 hours in encryption with 35% done!

      Reply
  15. Brent Avatar
    Brent

    Thanks for the tip.

    Reply
  16. David Avatar
    David

    Worked for me as well. The backup was hanging on Encrypting task when formatter my pen drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) system. I cancelled the job, reformatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) and now it’s backing up (54GB estimated 2 hours)

    Reply
  17. SoulSurfer Avatar
    SoulSurfer

    I have similar question to Jake “How would I go about “killing” the in progress encryption?” Is that going to kill my back up? which has taken 10 hours! (and now it’s encrypting and I need to take my computer out

    Reply
  18. Ben Avatar
    Ben

    Good grief. This is the solution I’ve been looking for!

    Reply
  19. Falk Avatar
    Falk

    Thanks for sharing – I still not understand, why the “common” way from apple is so much slower…

    Reply
  20. Uri Avatar
    Uri

    It saved me a ton of time, on the latest macOS Catalina 10.15.6 and USB-C external drive. Worked like a charm.

    Thank you!

    Reply
  21. JP Avatar
    JP

    Just what I needed! Thank you for sharing

    Reply
  22. Jen Avatar
    Jen

    I was wondering why the encrypting was taking so long (about 290 GB backup). I redid the whole thing as you listed, and the whole thing took a fraction of the time. Thanks so much!!

    Reply
  23. ivan Avatar
    ivan

    Thank you!

    Reply
  24. David Avatar
    David

    Thank you! First backup of under 400GB took less than 2 hours, then only at 17% encrypted after 2+ days. Followed your instructions, reformat done in less than a minute, then new backup done in under 2 hours again, but fully encrypted this time!

    Reply
  25. NeoTeNu Avatar
    NeoTeNu

    Many thanks for this post! It helped me a lot! 🙂

    Reply
  26. Georgia Avatar
    Georgia

    Thanks for this solution.

    I’ve currently been stuck in encryption for almost 24 hours and am only 13% through.

    I just went to format the hard drive in Disk Utility, however, it says by doing this it will erase the content – is that correct that it will erase all content on the hard drive by formatting in this way?

    Thanks

    Reply
  27. Sebastián Fehlandt Avatar
    Sebastián Fehlandt

    Hi,

    I did it like this but I copied the backup folder from my previous Time Machine backups disk and now its stuck at Encrypting Backup Disk (3%)

    Is there any way to workaround this? If I just deselect the encrypt backups option but keep the disk encrypted should be enough security right? Could that stop the issues?

    Reply
  28. JEP Avatar
    JEP

    In 10.9+ you can roll back encryption while its busy encrypting. I Terminal enter: diskutil cs revert /Volumes/title_drive -password
    NOTE: If your disk name contains spaces you will need to format the last part as follows: /Volumes/”title-drive -password” e.g., /”Time Machine -password”

    You will be prompted with the OSX password unlock/decrypt dialog, After that it starts decrypting.

    Check the status with:
    diskutil cs list

    Look for “Conversion Progress” and check if “Conversion Direction:” is set to “backward”

    FYI: the decrypt process takes as long as the encrypt which was ok for me. I gave up the encryption at 12% encrypted on a 6TB drive. Took me about 18 hours to decrypt.

    Other options if you have a spare Time Machine drive, erase the second drive and start again using the faster method shown above.

    I use two drives for Time Machine backups and the backup switches drives every 10 minutes to keep both drives up to date within 10 mins.

    Another option is to unplug the drives (I use a 4-drive enclosure attached to my Mac Mini using a thunderbolt cable.) Plug them back in when you want to do another backup.

    If I can get the short encrypt to work I would like to use them continually.

    Reply
  29. Dan E Avatar
    Dan E

    Hey Chris, I have been using my external disk for Time Machine backups since 2012, and never really thought about encrypting it. Recently I decided that it made sense to encrypt the disk. Unfortunately for me, I did not want to lose the data already stored on the disk, and therefore had to go about the “SLOW” way of encrypting (retroactively through Time Machine). I am on the fifth day of encryption, and have been periodically checking the status of the encryption using “diskutil cs list” in the terminal. All was going good (slow but consistent) until I hit 90%, it has been stuck at exactly 90% for over 24 hours now. My question for you is if there is a way to figure out what has caused it to stop making progress, and if there is anything I can do to fix the problem without losing all the progress I have made thus far? Thanks!

    Reply
  30. Ross Avatar
    Ross

    Halted the standard ‘slow as mollases’ encryption of TimeMachine backup using TimeMachine’s preference pane and then used Disk Utility to reformat the disk to MacOS Extended (case sensitive, Journaled, encrypted). When choosing this disk for TimeMachine I no longer see the option to encrypt. During backup the progress bar indicates encrypted. Thanks Chris!

    Reply
  31. Uli Avatar
    Uli

    Thank you Chris! My new 2TB Time Machine disk was on 4% after 10h encrypting. Used your workaround and encryption was sucessfully done in a minute and backup started right away in TM. Life saver 🙂

    Reply

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