Disabling encryption on my harddrive/home folder

[glmoneo]

I'm enjoying the new 19 release. However, I did something rather foolish and need to know how to reverse it. I did a fresh install on my laptop and encrypted the hard drive. Every time at boot it asks me for a password. I need to disable this. Also, how do I unencrypt my home folder? Any help would be appreciated.

[WharfRat]

Hello glmoneo

Welcome to Linux Mint and the Linux Mint forum

Bottom line is you're going to have to reinstall and, naturally, not choose the encrypted option.

[glmoneo]

I was afraid you'd say that...

[jglen490]

I would at least try to save your data that would be in /home to an unencrypted external hard drive or USB Thumb drive. Then you could reinstall Mint by formatting and NOT encrypting your internal drive. Then copy your /home data from the backup to your newly installed unencrypted Mint Linux.

[fabien85]

You could use one of the many linux softwares to backup and restore in a smooth way.
For backing up the system itself (e.g. if you installed lots of applications and dont want to go through that process again) you can use timeshift, which is installed by default in Mint. (in fact you should have been prompted to make a timeshift snapshot the first time you ran the update manager)
For backing up your personal files and data, there are other softwares. I personaly use backintime. To do it simple you can backup the whole /home.

Then reinstall, using the same password for your user as you used in the previous installation.
Then restore.

[Arch_Enemy]

I would at least try to save your data that would be in /home to an unencrypted external hard drive or USB Thumb drive. Then you could reinstall Mint by formatting and NOT encrypting your internal drive. Then copy your /home data from the backup to your newly installed unencrypted Mint Linux.

Install Systemback and get a USB drive large enough to hold all you data. Then you can repartition the drive and reinstall the OS complete.