Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Do you use filevault?

Do you use filevault

  • Yes

    Votes: 4 7.5%

  • No

    Votes: 49 92.5%
  • Total voters
    53
atari1356

atari1356

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Feb 27, 2004
1,582
32
I was looking into some ways of making my PowerBook more secure... I generally don't let it out of my site, but there are some things I wouldn't want people to have access to if it were stolen.

Filevault seems like a good idea since it encrypts data. Do you use it? How does it affect backups to an external hard drive? are the backed up files encrypted too?
 
2nyRiggz said:
have a password for your account to keep people out.


Bless
Click to expand...
It does not take much to reset user passwords. Disk images are 1 way to just encrypt some of your stuff.
 
i don't have a use for filevault myself. but i suppose if i was using a 'book with company info and a company 'book then i would consider it. for my uses though i have no reason.
 
2nyRiggz said:
Have a password for your account to keep people out. I dont use FV at all.
Click to expand...

Passwords are only useful if the person doesn't have physical access to your machine. Otherwise they're easy to get around, for example, by booting OS X into single user mode.

That said, I don't use filevault because I've had bad experiences in the past with encrypted file systems getting corrupted and me losing everything.
 
Ive herd from many sources that sometimes filevault will corrupt you data, which is bad. But I guess not as bad as someone else having it.
 
I used to have FileVault on, but when I found out it used more than 3 GB just to run I turned it off very fast... ;)

I haven't got anything that private on my iBook, anyway... ie. nothing I cannot hide in an encrypted sparse image or two, made with Disk Utility ;)
 
It also sucks that you cant make FV only backup certain files instead of everything in my home folder. Do i really need my music encrypted?

One More Thing....
My 500th Post!!
 
Laser47 said:
It also sucks that you cant make FV only backup certain files instead of everything in my home folder. Do i really need my music encrypted?

One More Thing....
My 500th Post!!
Click to expand...
You have a point about music. I suppose if you make your own music to sell then you might not want someone to get it pre-release. Same for movie editors etc. The only thing i would encypt would be iChats. Keeping the record has come in handy enough to keep it, but could mean death if someone got in. I don't use FV tho.
 
Laser47 said:
It also sucks that you cant make FV only backup certain files instead of everything in my home folder. Do i really need my music encrypted?
Click to expand...
I mentioned a way to get around this in another thread....I will see if i can find it. Basically you make a alias to the shared folder and move your music there.:D
 
trainguy77 said:
It does not take much to reset user passwords. Disk images are 1 way to just encrypt some of your stuff.
Click to expand...

Using a disk image is a good idea... that's at least a partial solution for me without having to turn on filevault.
 
I dont use it, i f'ed up my windows PC trying to use encryption softwear:rolleyes: :eek:. But I do wan't to know how to password protect files, is there a way to do that?
 
I've never tried it. The problems people were having with it when it first came out scared me off it forever.
 
nope

No reason for me to use it. As it's set up, where you can't encrypt individual files, folders and volumes, it is really not useful to me. Plus, the penalty of possible problems (especially with backup), space occupied, etc. it just ain't worth it to me. And I do not anticipate using it, unless they resolve the issues I mentioned.
 
No - I don't really have anything that I need to keep hidden on my computer. If I did, I would probably use a password protected disk image instead.
 
If you could encrypt certain folders I would most definitely use it but I need neither my photos nor my music encrypted. But I am thinking of using PGP (tip was courtesy of grapes :D )
 
Diatribe said:
But I am thinking of using PGP (tip was courtesy of grapes :D )
Click to expand...
It's a little on the pricey side. If my work didn't pay for it, I'd use the free version called GPG instead. It's released under the GNU license. GPG is very good on linux, but slightly less refined on Macs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back