How to view progress when encrypting a disk?

Question

Mountain Lion allows one to encrypt any disk by right-clicking on the disk in the Finder and selecting Encrypt from the contextual menu.

Is there anyway to check on the progress of this encryption process?

Answer 1

Open up the Terminal and enter the command:

diskutil cs list

You will see an output listing at least one Logical Volume Group, with a Logical Volume Family and Logical Volume nested below.

There is be a Conversion Status item in the Volume Family entry that will tell you if it's converting to an encrypted volume or not, and for a progress indicator, look under the Logical Volume entry for Size (Total) and Size (Converted) entries, to see how many GB have been converted so far.

During encryption:

Encryption Status:           Unlocked
    Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
    Conversion Status:       Converting
    Conversion Direction:    forward
    Has Encrypted Extents:   Yes
    Fully Secure:            No
    Passphrase Required:     Yes
 Disk:                       disk6
    Status:                  Online
    Size (Total):            569869340672 B (569.9 GB)
    Size (Converted):        231454277632 B (231.5 GB)
    Revertible:              Yes (unlock and decryption required)
    LV Name:                 Heap
    Volume Name:             Heap
    Content Hint:            Apple_HFS

Encryption completed:

Encryption Status:           Unlocked
    Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
    Conversion Status:       Complete
    Conversion Direction:    -none-
    Has Encrypted Extents:   Yes
    Fully Secure:            Yes
    Passphrase Required:     Yes
 Disk:                       disk6
    Status:                  Online
    Size (Total):            569869340672 B (569.9 GB)
    Size (Converted):        -none-
    Revertible:              Yes (unlock and decryption required)
    LV Name:                 Heap
    Volume Name:             Heap
    Content Hint:            Apple_HFS

The actual Terminal output is nested and longer. Here, only the most important information is listed.