FileVault, yes or no?

[Morod]

Hi,
I've been reading up on using FileVault. It sounds good, but I remember someone saying that using it can really slow down your iMac. Does anyone here use it? Any downside to using it, other than losing your password? Thanks for any info.
Morod

 

[emw]

Any downside to using it...?

I think the appropriate question is more "Any upside to using it?" Personally, I'm not certain that there's any real advantage to using it. For things that you really want to have secured from prying eyes, I'd create a password protected disk image using Disk Utility and store them there.

 

[Raid]

Hi,
I've been reading up on using FileVault. It sounds good, but I remember someone saying that using it can really slow down your iMac. Does anyone here use it? Any downside to using it, other than losing your password? Thanks for any info.
Morod

When I was using FileVault on my old G4 Sawtooth it only affected the time it took to shut down. However I stopped using FileVault after it corrupted the encrypted image of my user account... I was lucky enough to restore a large portion of my data from a backup, but I never switched it on again.

So moral of the story is if you are going to use it, back up your account often! But then having an unencrypted(? <- I don't know if time machine encrypts) backup right there beside your encrypted machine kind of defeats the purpose.