El Capitan Firevault Worries

[Internaut]

I unboxed I new MacBook Pro (13" variant) last night, charged it, took it downstairs and started setting it up. By default, Firevault encryption was ticked, and once set up it said it had paused because power was disconnected. This morning, I've started my research, and have various questions:

1. Are there any performance implications to the whole disk encryption (there certainly are on the corporate Dell from Hell, but that is ancient)?

2. How long should the encryption take on an out of the box MacBook pro (the only thing I've installed is Lightroom, so far)?

3. Is it easy enough to switch off at this stage (should I)?

4. A lot of the problems I'm reading about (not starting the encryption - staying paused, when the device is plugged in, for example) seem to relate to Yosemite. Is it more stable/reliable under El Capitan? If I simply plug my laptop in, and switch it on, before I go to work tomorrow morning, will I come home to a freshly encrypted MacBook?

 

[Oliverhay]

I've been using full drive encryption (fileVault 2) for a few years now. I haven't tried to test it but I didn't notice any noticeable slowdown when I set it up then.
You can switch it off, but then it takes ages to decrypt your drive.

I'd go for it, just don't forget your password

 

[killawat]

Performance impact is negligible. The type of crypto it uses is hardware accelerated via hardware on the CPU. Encryption time, no guess, maybe a day depending on the size and if it's being actively used. It can take a while to turn on/off but you won't need to mess with it afterwards.

I would just leave it on. I use it exclusively and find it works as well or better than bit locker or any third party alternatives that are available for the mac (there are a few). Encrypted or not, keep a backup.

 

[Internaut]

Well, I plugged it in when I got home from my office, and by the time I'd eaten veg bolognese it was done. I doubt I'd notice any difference in performance anyway - compared to my 2011 MBA, the current Pro is a beast of a laptop.