[Veltliner]

My computer (certified apple) technician warned me to use the File Vault feature in OS X.

He said, if there was any trouble with the hard disc - there would be no help to get my files. And he meant, that he recommended anyone to not use this feature, as it was trouble prone.

Is he right?

[MacosNerd]

He is, because the drive is a giant encrypted file, if any portion of it gets corrupted for any reason you lose the entire "drive".

FileVault can be useful to some but only in specific conditions, like if a person is traveling with sensitive data on his laptop. If you have a desktop there's little reason to use FV.

[chipchen]

Yea, file vault sucks. Only for the super paranoid.

1. Slows down your computer cause it's encrypting EVERYTHING back and forth.

2. Anything ever happens, your data is UNRECOVERABLE, barring a fleet of supergeek hackers getting together for a super hacking contest with unlimited time and a night with Angelina Jolie as the prize.

3. Are you THAT super sensitive about your data? I doubt even Steve himself uses this "feature."

[frdmfghtr]

Originally Posted by MacosNerd 

He is, because the drive is a giant encrypted file, if any portion of it gets corrupted for any reason you lose the entire "drive".

FileVault can be useful to some but only in specific conditions, like if a person is traveling with sensitive data on his laptop. If you have a desktop there's little reason to use FV.

Not quite correct---FileVault encrypts our home directory, not the entire drive. However, it may as well be the entire drive, since if FileVault gets corrupted, you've lost all your data.

I stay away from it too.

[TETENAL]

You need a complete and up-to-date backup of your files anyway. Even if you don't use FileVault.

[Big Mac]

Yeah, it is dangerous and a poorly thought out feature. If you have sensitive files you wish to encrypt you can create your own encrypted disk images to store them in, but encrypting entire Home folders makes absolutely no sense.

[Veltliner]

Thanks for your replies!

[jasong]

Well, if your data is so important that it needs to be encrypted is should also be backed up, which will allow you to recover from a hard drive crash. You shouldn't expect to be able to get any data back from a disk when there is "any trouble with" it, especially when that trouble is a stolen laptop which is what FileVault is meant to protect you from.

Personally all the potential drawbacks of FileVault are worth it to me. I know people who have had their laptops stolen and knowing that my banking records and such are not compromised in this event is worth quite a bit to me. If my FileVault gets hosed (which has not happened (yet?)), I can recover from my backup, the same way I can if my hard drive, or computer explodes.

Is it perfect, no. But if you think it's a bad idea because you can't recover your data in the event of a hard drive failure, you are already on your way to losing your data. Use FileVault or not, you need a backup to secure your data in the event of "trouble with the hard disk"

[peeb]

It is useful for a specific purpose. If you are using HIGHLY sensitive files that are backed up regularly, then it could be for you. For example, the data leaks after recent thefts of laptops with social security databases on could have been avoided by using it. It's not for everyday home users, for whom the risk outweighs the benefits.

[Sherman Homan]

File Vault - safety device or threat to your files?

Yes.
Both.
It is essential for laptops because they do get stolen. However, you do need a reliable backup scheme, at some point even if you never damage or lose your laptop, the Vault will get corrupted....

[chipchen]

Good points. To me, performance is most important. I don't have all that much sensitive data on my laptop... and if they wanna listen to my music and look at my pictures... well, sure, that's fine.

I agree, everyone should have a backup first and foremost.

However, there are other ways to keep sensitive information encrypted and/or secure without having to use FileVault. I just haven't found the performance sacrifice necessary or worthwhile. Obviously, everyone is different.

[Chuckit]

Originally Posted by Veltliner 

My computer (certified apple) technician warned me to use the File Vault feature in OS X.

He said, if there was any trouble with the hard disc - there would be no help to get my files.

That's like complaining that Ambien makes you sleepy. If you don't want your files to be extremely secure (which necessarily means unrecoverable if anything goes wrong), don't use it.

[Scott-G]

I have been using FileVault on my iBook for 3 years without any loss of data. I do regular backups, but I would do them even without FileVault.

As far as pictures and music, I keep them in the /Users/Shared folder that is not in my encrypted home directory. I just change iPhoto and iTunes to point to these locations.

I think there is a big paranoia factor with people thinking they will lose their data. That is what backups are for.

[Toyin]

This is a post of mine from 2003

So I decide to move my Music Library out of my home folder based on some articles on Filevault. This is on my 12" Rev A PB.

My Music folder is a little over 15gb, I've got a 60gb HD and I've got 22gb of free space.

I decide to be conservative and select 9gb of the music library and move it to a folder on the same level as the users.

After about 30minutes I get the "you are running out of disk space" warning. WTF?
I check and sure enough I've only got 56mb left. Before I can stop the copy it get's cancelled and tells me there is not enough disk space to finish the copy. Now I've got 26MB left on the disk.

Fine, so I check to see how far the copy has gone (aprx 8gb) and I delete the corresponding files within my home folder. Still only 26MB left on the disk.

I thought maybe the logout would bring up the dialog that filevault is recovering disk space. No such luck. I reboot, no such luck.

I thought maybe I need more free space, so I delete the new music folder. Now I've got 9gb of free disk space. But filevault still refuses to give up any disk space. Logout/in, reboot, still only 9gb free. Delete the rest of my music folder, still only 9gb free. I search for all invisible files on my hard drive, nothing is larger than 500MB.

I boot into firewire mode and repair the disk from my desktop, no problems there.

So now I'm stuck. I can't recover the disk space and the only option I can see is to create a new user and delete my old user. In that case I may as well zero the drive and start over.

Anyone have a better solution?

Be careful with Filevault if you start using more then 1/2 your drive space. You can find yourself in trouble if you decide you don't want to use it. I had a similar problem recently when I tried using Filevault on my wife's Macbook. Even worse I couldn't use the weekly back up disc to recover data because it was encrypted

There was also a performance hit, but that was on much slower hardware. What they need to do is create a Filevault that can be applied to individual folders. I really don't care if my music and videos aren't encrypted.

[- - e r i k - -]

The easier solution is of course to create an encrypted disk image in Disk Utility and store your por...sensitive files on that.

In fact that's basically what FileVault is, an encrypted disk image containing your home folder.

[Toyin]

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - - 

The easier solution is of course to create an encrypted disk image in Disk Utility and store your por...sensitive files on that.

In fact that's basically what FileVault is, an encrypted disk image containing your home folder.

True and this is what I do for my financial information. I'm forced to mount the image each time I need it. It's just not as invisible as Filevault.

[chipchen]

Originally Posted by Toyin 

True and this is what I do for my financial information. I'm forced to mount the image each time I need it. It's just not as invisible as Filevault.

Always trade offs. I use an encrypted disc image. I have to mount it, but I'm not using those files all the time. Plus, as a bonus, I can backup the whole image file and still access it from other Macs.

Toyin, one thing you can do, use automator or applescript. Basically, set it up so that when you click a doc icon, it mounts the image and opens the file you want. Seems like that would be a great solution for you.

[inkhead]

The simple answer is, keep your porn collection on a USB key or expresscard memory that you can take out. You can keep it encrypted if you need to. Or just use disk utility to create a new (resizable) encrypted disk image to put stuff in.

[Naaaaak]

I thought filevault would be fine since I am on a laptop. Low chances of a power outage and battery backup would be there to save me anyway, right?

Then I got a kernel panic running parallels and it lost 2 weeks of data (but fortunately it did not matter much).

My lessons learned:
1) Placing all data in a single encrypted disk image is a trap, especially when running apps that screw with lower level things or have kexts or whatever.
2) Make encrypted disk images of specific folders and mount them only as needed.

Maybe it would be neat if they found a reasonable way for a future version of filevault to encrypt on a file by file basis. Any corruption issues would then be relegated to a single file. Although I cannot imagine such a feature having even reasonable disk performance.

[TETENAL]

Originally Posted by Naaaaak 

My lessons learned

Unfortunately you didn't learn the most important lesson: Backup your data!

[- - e r i k - -]

He said he lost two weeks of data. Presumably he did a full backup two weeks earlier.