Sep 11, 2026, 9:17 PMWhen Time Machine asks me if I want to encrypt the backup with a password, I say no; the backup drive itself is encrypted with a long, random passphrase, so there’s no reason to encrypt to add a second layer of encryption.
But then, when the first Time Machine backup starts running, a notification pops up: “Time machine is backing up an encrypted disk to an unencrypted disk.” Hmm, that’s weird, I definitely formatted the drive with encryption.
8/13
Sep 11, 2026, 9:17 PMI open open Disk Utility and check the properties for the mounted drive. It says the drive isn’t encrypted.
So I need to try again to erase the drive with Disk Utility and reformat it with an encryption passphrase. I don’t know why I’d be any more successful this time than I was the first time, but let’s give it a go.
9/13
Sep 11, 2026, 9:17 PMTo do that I need to stop the Time Machine backup, which by this point has been running for about 15 minutes (with a “minutes remaining” counter which started out at 15 minutes and has been steadily _increasing_ for the entire time the backup is running, such that it now says “About 54 minutes remaining”), remove the drive from the Time Machine configuration again, and start over.
10/13
Sep 11, 2026, 9:17 PMI repeat the same steps I went through last time. This time I check after erasing the drive in Disk Utility and confirm that the drive is encrypted. Then I once again accept the prompt to use the drive for Time Machine backups and once again disable encryption in the Time Machine backup config since the drive is already encrypted.
11/13
Sep 11, 2026, 9:17 PMBut as I’m doing that I form a suspicion about what happened to the encryption the first time, and once I save the Time Machine configuration, my suspicion is confirmed: when I turned off encryption in the Time Machine configuration, Time Machine _reformatted the filesystem on the drive and removed the encryption_. Wow, _that’s_ certainly completely intuitive behavior that I would totally have expected!
12/13
Sep 11, 2026, 9:17 PMSo I start over, a third time, and this time I say yes, I do want to encrypt the backup, and give the Time Machine configuration window the same passphrase I had already given to Disk Utility. It reformats the drive, but this time it keeps the encryption.
You have got to be fucking kidding me with this shit.
13/13