Turned off FileVault, now Decrypting is stuck on my iMac running Ventura

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Level 1

6 points

Turned off FileVault, now Decrypting is stuck on my iMac running Ventura

I elected to Turn FileVault off. It says "Decrypting..." but the Estimating time remaining status bar has been going back and forth and never stopping. It's been in this state over 3 weeks and my computer is experiencing all kinds of screen freezes and is running significantly slower than it was-- which is why I wanted to turn off encryption in the first place). Things I've checked and actions taken based on suggestions from older threads and posts here and elsewhere:

Time machine backups
Turned off "Enable Power Nap" and "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" in Energy Saver in order not to disrupt the decryption process
In Terminal, FileVault status is "On".
In Terminal, attempted to disable FileVault and received the message "FileVault was not disabled (11)".
I checked Disk Utilities and status is "Encrypted".
I received "Volume appears to be OK" when I ran First Aid, and there were no errors fixed.
I used Hardware diagnostics and no problems were detected.
When I retrieved from Terminal the list of volumes, my Data volume and my System volume both had FileVault status as "Yes (Unlocked)".

I'm at a loss as to how to get out of this estimating-time-remaining loop.

I am on a 2017 iMac 18,3 running macOS Ventura 13.6.9 .

Any assistance or suggestions would be helpful.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iMac (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Sep 21, 2024 9:40 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

HWTech

Level 9

60,650 points

Sep 21, 2024 9:26 PM in response to ItsARap2282

Filevault rarely interferes with the normal operation of macOS and does not have any significant impact on performance. Performance issues are usually caused by hardware issues, or issues with third party software. It is usually a bad idea to enable/disable Filevault while troubleshooting any issues....especially performance issues. If anything prevents the process from completing, then it just makes things more difficult. At that point, the only option is to start completely over with a clean install which involves erasing the drive followed by reinstalling macOS & restoring from a backup.

In your case I would guess the hard drive portion of your Fusion Drive is failing. You can check the health of the hard drive by running DriveDx (free trial period). Post the complete DriveDx text report here using the "Additional Text" icon which looks like a piece of paper on the forum editing toolbar. You may as well post the health report for the SSD portion as well. The Apple Diagnostics rarely detect hardware issues unless the drive failure is extreme, but this DriveDx health report can show whether the drives may some hardware issues.

Make sure to have a good backup, because a drive failure will just keep getting worse the more the drive is used.

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Answer 2

ItsARap2282 Author

Level 1

6 points

Sep 28, 2024 5:22 AM in response to HWTech

Thank you so much for this feedback. You're the best. I ran DriveDx and have posted the results for both drives below. Looks like I've got problems with my hard drive as you predicted. I'm doing more frequent backups to Time Machine as well.

DriveDx Report HHD

DriveDx Report SSD

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Answer 3

HWTech

Level 9

60,650 points

Sep 28, 2024 10:11 AM in response to ItsARap2282

That hard drive is in a really bad state. Already over 4,100 sectors have been reallocated with over 3,200 sectors pending reallocation. It is those 3,200 sectors pending reallocation which are the problem since that number will likely just keep growing the more you attempt to use the hard drive. It is those sectors pending reallocation which are producing all the errors & causing all the problems.

The hard drive is also no longer able to correct for any errors.

The Fusion Drive setup complicates the data recovery process as does the iMac itself. The iMac complicates things because it makes it very difficult to open up the computer to access the drives. The Fusion Drive requires both drives to be connected together in order to access any data from the system. Simply using macOS and standard data recovery software is no longer an option with as many bad sectors the hard drive has now. Because of all these complexities, I recommend contacting a professional data recovery service although you may still be required to remove the two internal drives so they can be sent to the recovery service.

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