[ipodguy007]

After 20 yrs I'm back on a mac. Very nice so far but still trying to shake away the PC way of thinking.

Anyway, my wife has financial files, mainly doc, excel, she needs secured. Which is better? And easier for her to deal with, i.e. fewest hoops to jump thru to get to open files?

1. filevault -- create 2nd user and keep ONLY these files in doc folder. I presume I can remove all the other (empty I guess) folders from the new user. We're talking abt 1 meg, 2 max.

or

2. use disk utility to create a mountable image? Not sure yet how to do this but will read on.

Thx.

[Big Mac]

Nooooooo File Vault. File Vault is the most destructive built-in "feature" of Mac OS X and probably the second most destructive thing in OS X history after Norton. Just search the OS X forum (or any other OS X forum) to see the serious problems people have with it.

Definitely use disk images. Open Disk Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility), open the File menu, select New, select New Blank Disk Image, select AES 128 from the Encryption menu and save the image. For security, choose to not save the password to the image in the keychain. Teach your wife how to mount the image, and then show her how it works like any other disk.

[macintologist]

I second the above. Encrypted disk images are definitely the way to go.