External HDD Encryption

[olletsocmit]

So, I have always been into strong passwords & mac security.... I got a new 8TB G-drive. I have about 3TB on another drive that i will be transferring to my new g-drive. I am going to do the normal right click on the g-drive icon and then Encrypt drive. Should I encrypt it now since its empty, or load all the data on the new drive then encrypt it.

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ok so i was doing some experimenting and started encrypting it with no info on it. its been about 1 hour so far and i just looked at the status in the terminal (command = diskutil cs list) and noticed its at 2% after an hour.... on an empty drive...? i am confused.

see below, it shows the status of 2% (screen shot clip from terminal).

 

[0983275]

It's much quicker if you encrypt the drive as you format it via Disk Utility. (Select Mac OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrytped), etc)

 

[olletsocmit]

It's much quicker if you encrypt the drive as you format it via Disk Utility. (Select Mac OS X Extended (Journaled, Encrytped), etc)

how can one way be so so much quicker? there has to be a big dif in the encryption.

 

[jesusplay]

doesn't matter

 

[Weaselboy]

how can one way be so so much quicker? there has to be a big dif in the encryption.

It is much faster to just format the blank drive then move the data over. If you turn on encryption after having data on there it needs to go through and encrypt that data. If you do the format there is no data to encrypt, it just formats the drive to the encrypted format.

 

[olletsocmit]

ok. so its ok and secure to just use disk utility and format it to encrypted. it takes about 1 min vs days when i right click and excrypt

 

[Weaselboy]

ok. so its ok and secure to just use disk utility and format it to encrypted. it takes about 1 min vs days when i right click and excrypt

Yup... exact same end result.