I set up Time Machine in Mountain Lion by plugging in a newly formatted 500GB USB drive, selecting that from the Time Machine dialog, and checking the box to encrypt my backups. A window appeared that said "Preparing disk [diskname] for encryption." The progress bar quickly filled to about 80% and then stalled there. It's been about 22 hours now with no sign of progress. I know encrypting a drive can take a while, but is this too long? Should I force quit or unplug the drive and start over?
Notes:
- I checked the system log to verify that the computer's been up and working all night; it didn't go to sleep.
- The drive is no longer showing up in the finder or Disk Utility. Is that normal when encryption is in progress?