[eternaldiatribe]

I installed everything on my Power Mac (1.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 300 GB HDD) and copied over all my MP3s, videos, photos, etc. The data totals just under 60 GB. I enabled FileVault and it told me it would take nearly 4 hours to encrypt everything, so I started it and ran errands. When I came back around 5 hours later, there was an error message telling me "Verification failed" and that FileVault had been disabled.

Is this because I have too much data in my Home folder? If so, should I run FileVault BEFORE copying over the large chunk of my data? Thanks.

[TETENAL]

First question, do you really need FileVault?

FileVault is great to protect sensible data for example when you are traveling a lot with your notebook. You are using a PowerMac, so I guess you are not carrying it around. How likely is it to be stolen? How sensible is your data really? Would a thief really be interested in your data or just the machine? If it's a lot of holiday photos and stuff, then FileVault is unnecessary. Very important data can be stored in a keychain-note or a separate encrypted sparse disk image.

If you need FileVault, the next question, do you really need everything to be in the secure home folder?

60 GB sounds like a lot of data. If this are pictures, iTunes songs, photos, iMovie projects, then they don't necessarily need to be in the secure home. You can put them in /Users/Shared/ or elsewhere outside your FileVault home.

And at last:

Converting from and to FileVault requires at least as much free space on the hard disk as the size of the home folder you are converting. If you are converting a 60 GB home folder, you need at least 60 GB free space on the disk during conversion. If you convert a fresh folder you would only need a few kB for the conversion, and you can add as much data as you have disk space later. Note however that should you decide to disable FileVault, you would again need the size of your home folder as free space or you can not disable it.

My advice:

Don't bother with FileVault on a stationary desktop machine.

[workerbee]

Originally posted by TETENAL:
My advice: Don't bother with FileVault on a stationary desktop machine.

Also, FileVault really slows down your data throughput to the disk -- it's up to 50% slower.

[eternaldiatribe]

Thanks for the in-depth reply.

I am a very recetn switcher and am just concerned about security. I've my outgoing traffic locked down with Little Snitch and use a hardware firewall in tandem with the Apple firewall to control incoming traffic, and not knowing much about the OS as yet, I thought it would be prudent to use it.

Thanks again!

[cambro]

Mac OSX is a multiuser platform.

Make a new user, turn file vault on for that user.

Login with that user to do your super secret stuff and keep your super secret files safe.

Use the non-filevault user for your normal day-to-day computing. This should be fine, unless you are a 007 secret agent and everything you do is super sensitive.

[activemac]

Originally posted by eternaldiatribe:
When I came back around 5 hours later, there was an error message telling me "Verification failed" and that FileVault had been disabled.

Do you have Norton AntiVirus? If so turn it off before you activate FileVault. You can turn NAV back on after FileVault is done.