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c-t

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 29, 2010
17
0
When I format an external drive with the "Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)" setting in Disk Utility, and set a password, I'm supposedly encrypting the entire drive.

But what does this mean, and how exactly does it work?

When I open a file on the drive, what exactly happens? Is the file read into memory only? Is some other unencrypted stuff written out to the drive temporarily?

What happens when I prematurely shut down my drive (by unplugging the power cord). Does some unencrypted data remain on the drive then?
 
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