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Can someone please explain to me FileVault
- Thread starter damonbus
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maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
Its a whole disc encryption, so if your MBP is stolen, your data is safe.
Pros, data security
Cons, there's a little bit of a performance hit since the data has to be decrypted as its being read
Do you recommend it being turned on? What about that other option during setup, allow my icloud account to unlock my disk, should this be turned on?
maflynn
macrumors Broadwell
Definitely, the speed hit is barely noticeable and it protects your data.
Given the age we're living it, I believe its prudent to encrypt your data.
maka344
macrumors 68020
Yes but with 2FA.
While encryption ensures your data is safe, a Mac can be formatted and simply re-used.
Bear in mind, although it is well worth encrypting the disk if your mac ever leaves your home, it takes a really long time (like overnight) to perform the encryption if you have a load of data on it. May be quicker if you can enable encryption before migration (but I've never tried that). Just so as to warn you. (I'm basing this on having had to wipe my SSD, clean install El Cap and restore from a TM backup - I had to re-enable FV2 and it took many hours to encrypt 500GB on the SSD).
Don't think he's got to worry about that. He seems to be asking about the options presented when setting up a new Mac.
After setting mine up I went back to enable FireVault and haven't noticed much of a performance hit. But it is a new computer and there's not much on it at this point. Not sure if that'll change as the drive sees more use.
I am allowing iCloud to unlock (with 2FA set up on the account as someone else mentioned above).