I'm running Filevault on my internal hard drive, but I realized that I never encrypted my external drive. Currently it's running Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and I'm not seeing any encrypt options anywhere (right click in Finder, disk utility, etc…). How can I encrypt this drive in place without having to erase all the data first? I could restore the data from a Time Machine backup but that sounds very tedious and time consuming. If there is a faster way I'd like to attempt that first.
Encrypt external HDD without erasing data on High Sierra
encryptionfilevaulthard drivehigh sierra
Related Solutions
I understand that you're running into issues, so this is going to be more for others looking for info on this topic. Encrypting non-boot volumes should be a relatively easy process in OS X 10.8.x and later.
To encrypt a non-boot volume:
Right-click on the volume you want to encrypt
Select the Encrypt… command
- When prompted, enter a password and (optionally) a password hint.
The drive will momentarily disappear from the desktop (to initialize the encryption) then re-appear.
If you format a drive as Encrypted, you are in fact turning on File Vault, as that's the only encryption layer that OS X supports. The main advantage of partitioning the drive as Journaled, and then turning on File Vault is that you can revert the drive to a simple unencrypted volume if you should choose to do so in the future. You can't do this with a volume that was formatted directly as Encrypted. Other than that, the end result is the same.
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Best Answer
Normally the option to encrypt the drive can be found by right clicking the drive's icon in finder and selecting 'Encrypt "DISKNAME"'. You will not see the encryption option if the disk is using Master Boot Record or Apple Partition Map as the partition scheme.
This is because High Sierra encryption actually converts the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to Apple File System (APFS), and this cannot be done on a Master Boot Record or Apple Partition Map partitioned drive.
You can check the disk partition type in Disk Utility.