I'm trying to encrypt an external drive of mine using Apple's built in drive encryption tool into OS X through Finder.
The drive is formatted as Mac OS Extended(Journaled) and I'm plugging the drive through USB 2.0. Also I'm running Mavericks with all the latest updates.
Even though after a restart or switching to another Mac, I'm getting the following error:
Unable to create a new Core Storage logical volume group.
Any suggestions?
Best Answer
OK, I'm running El Capitan OS X 10.11. The Apple app "Disk Utility" is useless to create encryption, as it typically returns
So the fix is to use a little terminal magic. After adding your USB drive to the Mac, run terminal At the command-line prompt, enter:
You will see your main (internal) disk listed, as well as your USB:
You can spot your external drive by its size -- mine is 32 GB, which, after overhead is around 31.5. In other words, its name is KINGSTON at drive identifier disk2s1. Now, using your USB drive's device identifier in place of disk2s1, pick a suitable name for your new drive. I like thing2:
About 30 seconds of progress later, you should get:
Now, open a Finder window, and right click your newly named disk. Pick the option encrypt . In my case, the USB 3.0 encryption took about 12 minutes of effort for 32 GB (45MB/s write). You will know you are done, when the drive activity light goes out.