Apple FileVault Disable Issues

[shovenose]

Hey all,

I'm working on someone's laptop, upgrading SSD to a larger one. It's a 2015 MacBook Pro, Retina. Originally it came with a 128GB SSD. We're upgrading to a 1TB SSD.

Anyway, I figured it would be a good idea to disable FileVault (full disk encryption) prior to moving the data. So I went to settings, and clicked turn FileVault Off. Entered their password, and it did its thing. It took about an hour, like it estimated. At the very end, the progress bar went away, then it froze, and showed the Apple equivalent of a BSOD "this computer restarted due to a problem blah blah"

Upon restarting, it boots, but when I enter the password, it just goes back to that screen. After a few times of that, it went into recovery OS where it prompted me to change the password. So I did. Well, upon a reboot, it does the same thing...

Anyone have any ideas? I did not do anything wrong here, you would think simply clicking a disable FileVault button would work... Apple quality strikes again.

I hate Macs, have I made that part clear yet? But I'd love to fix this issue... as I'll probably have an angry customer if I can't figure this out.

Thanks all!

[shovenose]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

Well, if anyone else has this problem, here's the solution:

1. Throw the Mac away and buy a real computer.

2. If 1 is not possible, then proceed to 3:

3. Boot up the computer on battery, use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to move the data to an external drive, then reinstall the OS, and put your data back. No, you can't use Time Machine to backup the data, because it detects that there is a pending action in FileVault and will not allow you to use it.

[Topcat]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

There's many things I tell people when they're considering a new computer....here's a couple relevant to this thread:

1) Don't drink the apple-flavored koolaid!

2) Unless you're working for the government and/or have some idiotic 'need', never encrypt a hard drive!

[stj]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

and :
3) Don't drink the M$-flavored koolaid!

gates wants you dead,
so use Linux or BSD or something else.

[shovenose]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

There's many things I tell people when they're considering a new computer....here's a couple relevant to this thread:

1) Don't drink the apple-flavored koolaid!

2) Unless you're working for the government and/or have some idiotic 'need', never encrypt a hard drive!

Yep. Sadly I know a few really smart techies that love Apple and use Macs and I just can't understand it. I really don't.

Let's think about this a little bit. The target market of MacBook Pro users would be either creative professionals or people that work with audio/video stuff. So, who the heck thought 8GB of non-upgradeable RAM and a 128GB SSD was a good idea? For the prices they charge, this think should have at least come with a 256GB SSD. Oh, and the RAM... One of my laptops is a cheapish Lenovo, and it came with soldered RAM, but they give you a single DIMM slot if you want to upgrade... that's a perfect solution. Go ahead and solder the RAM on if you want, Apple, but give your customers a darn DIMM slot! But no, we need our stuff to be 2mm thinner than the competition...

As for the SSD, there is no reason for them using a proprietary SSD. A standard NVMe M2 form factor drive would have been FINE. And cheaper for them. And used less space, because yes, their special drive is LARGER than a standard NVMe drive. Sure, this is a 2015 MBP, but NVMe has been around since 2013, and for the price Apple charges, I would have expected them to use it.

The only reason they make these decisions is GREED and PROFIT. I have no issue with businesses making money, but this is such a blatant rip off. The amount that Apple marks up RAM and SSD upgrades on their laptops is crazy, with insane margin, even on the new M2 models which are SoC based and the actual cost difference is minimal.

But, hardware aside, yes, it seems that Apple wants you to enable FileVault, in fact, I suspect it did it automatically at some point or prompted the user to do it and he did it. I asked him and he didn't even know what it was and had no recollection of enabling it. What I don't get is why... there is no point, like you said. He's a DJ and really the only thing on the computer is the DJ software and some music. Nothing private or personal.

And if MacOS is so wonderful and reliable and easy to use, this core functionality (disabling disk encryption) should work perfectly fine, and not be broken.

[Topcat]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

so use Linux or BSD or something else.

FWIW, all the basic web browsing terminals around here are now running Mint.... Linux has come a long way the last few years....With the exception of gaming, it's really hard to beat these days for the most common needs of a PC. As a matter of fact, this post created from a 5th gen I7 Toshiba laptop someone gave me. Mint runs fabulous on it; even though it's licensed for 10Pro.

Yep. Sadly I know a few really smart techies that love Apple and use Macs and I just can't understand it. I really don't.

Me either. I tend to decline repairs of apple products.

Let's think about this a little bit. The target market of MacBook Pro users would be either creative professionals or people that work with audio/video stuff. So, who the heck thought 8GB of non-upgradeable RAM and a 128GB SSD was a good idea? For the prices they charge, this think should have at least come with a 256GB SSD. Oh, and the RAM... One of my laptops is a cheapish Lenovo, and it came with soldered RAM, but they give you a single DIMM slot if you want to upgrade... that's a perfect solution. Go ahead and solder the RAM on if you want, Apple, but give your customers a darn DIMM slot! But no, we need our stuff to be 2mm thinner than the competition...

Pathetic....but the crappiest one I saw lately was an Acer. 11th gen I3, soldered. 8gb RAM, soldered and not upgradeable. 128gb storage, soldered. What a piece of crap....and he paid about 500 bucks for it. Motherboard died, data recovery impossible.

But, hardware aside, yes, it seems that Apple wants you to enable FileVault, in fact, I suspect it did it automatically at some point or prompted the user to do it and he did it. I asked him and he didn't even know what it was and had no recollection of enabling it. What I don't get is why... there is no point, like you said. He's a DJ and really the only thing on the computer is the DJ software and some music. Nothing private or personal.

Yup...I always tell them that unless they work for the CIA and are protecting their security clearance, no need to encrypt....

[Uranium-235]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

Did you back up his regular data before you did this?

[shovenose]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

FWIW, all the basic web browsing terminals around here are now running Mint.... Linux has come a long way the last few years....With the exception of gaming, it's really hard to beat these days for the most common needs of a PC. As a matter of fact, this post created from a 5th gen I7 Toshiba laptop someone gave me. Mint runs fabulous on it; even though it's licensed for 10Pro.


Me either. I tend to decline repairs of apple products.

Pathetic....but the crappiest one I saw lately was an Acer. 11th gen I3, soldered. 8gb RAM, soldered and not upgradeable. 128gb storage, soldered. What a piece of crap....and he paid about 500 bucks for it. Motherboard died, data recovery impossible.


Yup...I always tell them that unless they work for the CIA and are protecting their security clearance, no need to encrypt....

Eww, Acer :P but at least that's a $500 computer, not a $1500 computer. Still inexcusable but at least it feels less wrong?

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

yea, apple crap is always overpriced. never liked it. i can build the exact same crap myself that apple provides on my own with far lower cost than what apple provides.

as for apple product repair, me three! i too also decline repairing apple products because apple products arent designed to be repair ppl friendly as the parts are either too small or too hard to access. since they are much harder to repair, i often charge a premium to repair apple products. if they can pay the premium price for apple products, the client can definitely afford the premium to repair apple products as well. its either that or i decline the repair for the reason: im not an authorised apple repair technician. please take the product to an authorised apple technician.

with regards to drive/file encryption, isnt apple filevault a type of software based encryption? it sure looks like it. well... i prefer hardware based encryption like putting a password on the hard drive if i ever needed it for my *ahem* dodgy stuff... or a self-encrypting drive (SED) but software based file encryption, no thanks. if the software company goes out of business and there's an issue or a bug with the encryption, then u're shit out of luck there, buddy! lol!

as for soldering crap onto the motherboard for an all-in-one integrated solution to cut cost, i dont mind soldered cpu, ram, bios chip (instead of socketed bios chip) etc. but soldering the storage to the board is just a bird brained cost cutting measure! as u have shown, if the motherboard dies, the user's data is poof! so there's good/smart cost cutting measures but there's also bird brained cost cutting measures! i tell all my relatives, friends and clients, never to buy a computer with soldered storage onboard!!

[diif]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

The professionals I know with Apples bought them for their hardware capabilities (three simultaneous HD outputs) or for creating and capturing and organizing music that was superior than on Windows Machines.

It doesn't matter if your storage is soldered or not, it should be backed up, that's what you should be telling everyone.

[Topcat]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

It doesn't matter if your storage is soldered or not, it should be backed up, that's what you should be telling everyone.

I do, as likely most enlightened techs do. Tends to fall on deaf ears.

[shovenose]

Re: Apple FileVault Disable Issues

It doesn't matter if your storage is soldered or not, it should be backed up, that's what you should be telling everyone.

You must not spend a great deal of time dealing with the general public You can tell them a lot of things but if I refused to work on every single computer until the client had a proper, up-to-date backup prior to me touching it I'd never be doing any computer work LOL.

I do, as likely most enlightened techs do. Tends to fall on deaf ears.

Yep.

I've had a decent success rate getting people to use Backblaze. $7/month set it and forget it and hopefully never need it but if you do, you can restore via download or they will ship your stuff on a hard drive if you don't have fast enough internet or it's just too big of a download.

For people with important data I usually recommend a USB flash drive or hard drive in addition to Backblaze. But let's face it, based on my past experience like maybe 25% of people actually do their backups regularly or even remember where the backup drive was?

Anyone who does computer work knows that backups are suddenly so important to people... after they've already lost their data...