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How's FileVault and APFS Encryption working for You?

I do think I know why there are no users with a token on my machine. I inherited this MBP from my son. I created another account (mine) and made it an admin as well. This was a year and a half ago. After I set mine up and personalized it, I removed his Admin account. I bet that account had the "token". It is too bad a clean install is the only way to go to get a "token". That said, I don't understand how I could have enabled FV a few months ago if there never was a token?
 
Well I gave up on this October 8th and just moved forward. Since then I have installed the latest dev beta patches. I did nothing else. Including trying FV. Put it totally out of my mind.

Until this morning, I remembered it and thought I would give it a shot expecting that annoying message about my token or lack there of. Wouldn’t you know it, it turned on and started working. The first sign was the ask of whether I wanted to use my iCloud account to unlock in the event I forgot my PW. (For sure). Never got to that point before. 2 hours remaining from the get go.

Sometimes things just have a way of working themselves out I guess or Apple knew this was a bug and fixed it. Glad I didn’t wipe my machine clean.
 
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Question - now that I have my system running FV and my APFS SSD reads APFS Encrypted, I did my usually CCC image backup. The external drive is formatted as HFS+. After a backup of the APFS Encrypted SSD, the image reads as HFS. My questions:

1
Is my image encrypted? That is, does encryption carry over?

2
If not, can I encrypt my backup drive to Encrypted without losing data? Remember, it is HFS, so HFS Encrypted or APFS Encrypted? The drive has multiple partitions.

If #1 is not encrypted, I guess I am pretty much exposed if someone stole my BU external drive.
 
LarryJoe33 said:
Question - now that I have my system running FV and my APFS SSD reads APFS Encrypted, I did my usually CCC image backup. The external drive is formatted as HFS+. After a backup of the APFS Encrypted SSD, the image reads as HFS. My questions:

1
Is my image encrypted? That is, does encryption carry over?

2
If not, can I encrypt my backup drive to Encrypted without losing data? Remember, it is HFS, so HFS Encrypted or APFS Encrypted? The drive has multiple partitions.

If #1 is not encrypted, I guess I am pretty much exposed if someone stole my BU external drive.
Click to expand...

Select the backup volume in CCC and it will show the encryption status.

If you want to enable encryption, boot into the backup volume (hold control at startup), then enable Filevault. Once it is complete, reboot and CCC should show the proper encryption status.

From the CCC5 APFS FAQ page:

CCC doesn't play any role in the encryption process – encryption is a function of the volume, not of the tool that's writing a file. If you enable FileVault on your startup disk, then the files on your startup disk will be encrypted. Those files are decrypted on-the-fly by the filesystem when they're opened by an application. Likewise, if you enable FileVault on the destination volume (e.g. via the Security Preference Pane while booted from the backup), then the files on the destination will be encrypted. CCC doesn't have to encrypt those files, they're encrypted on-the-fly by the filesystem as the bits are written to disk.
 
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SaSaSushi said:
Select the backup volume in CCC and it will show the encryption status.

If you want to enable encryption, boot into the backup volume (hold control at startup), then enable Filevault. Once it is complete, reboot and CCC should show the proper encryption status.

From the CCC5 APFS FAQ page:

CCC doesn't play any role in the encryption process – encryption is a function of the volume, not of the tool that's writing a file. If you enable FileVault on your startup disk, then the files on your startup disk will be encrypted. Those files are decrypted on-the-fly by the filesystem when they're opened by an application. Likewise, if you enable FileVault on the destination volume (e.g. via the Security Preference Pane while booted from the backup), then the files on the destination will be encrypted. CCC doesn't have to encrypt those files, they're encrypted on-the-fly by the filesystem as the bits are written to disk.
Click to expand...
Thank you, Makes sense. Any downside to encrypting a backup? The drive does not leave my home. Is this a good practice?
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Weaselboy said:
No an no.... do what @SaSaSushi described to encrypt your backup.
Click to expand...
Thanks, same question for you too above?
 
Ugh after all these years of owning a MacBook and updating to the newest OS without an issue before I enabled this utter crap thingy called FileVault. I should’ve known better. I’m on day 3 and it’s on 97% encryption. My MacBook is so ****ing slow it’s driving me crazy. I get the extra security with encryption but c’mon this is f*cking nuts! I have a MacBook Pro “15 (2012) 2.3 GHz quad core Intel i7, 16gb ram and a ****ing 256gb SSD, with only 70GB used and I can’t believe how ****ing long this takes. C’mon Apple, this is a disgrace. This thing has turned me off of FileVault forever. I’m gonna see how my Mac runs after it’s done. If it ever ****ing finishes. Sorry, but I’m pissed.
 
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Ok the encrypting just finished and the computer is back running smoothly as butter. But the encryption process was excruciating for me. Just wanna throw this out there.
 
baconwizard said:
Ok the encrypting just finished and the computer is back running smoothly as butter. But the encryption process was excruciating for me. Just wanna throw this out there.
Click to expand...
Mine was surprisingly quick, 5-8 hours.

Question, I was asked if I wanted to use my AppleID to retrieve my key. I don't remember setting up a key or an encryption password. Is this normal?
 
LarryJoe33 said:
Mine was surprisingly quick, 5-8 hours.

Question, I was asked if I wanted to use my AppleID to retrieve my key. I don't remember setting up a key or an encryption password. Is this normal?
Click to expand...

Hmm that's weird. I thought the whole point of the FileVault encryption is to encrypt your drive and lock it with a key or passcode that YOU only know so you are the only one who has access to your data. Would seem pretty obvious that you need some sort a key or passcode for that. I chose the same passcode as my login just for convenience. Maybe try to use your AppleID to retrieve your key like stated?
 
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baconwizard said:
Ok the encrypting just finished and the computer is back running smoothly as butter. But the encryption process was excruciating for me. Just wanna throw this out there.
Click to expand...
It was excruciating here as well. With APFS it took 3 days of kernel_task using 130% CPU and lag so bad that I couldn't control the cursor on my late-2013 i7 MBP. That was for 450GB of data, but still... When I did this with HFS+ under Sierra kernel_task stayed at around 30% and there was no obvious degradation in performance.
 
rraven said:
It was excruciating here as well. With APFS it took 3 days of kernel_task using 130% CPU and lag so bad that I couldn't control the cursor on my late-2013 i7 MBP. That was for 450GB of data, but still... When I did this with HFS+ under Sierra kernel_task stayed at around 30% and there was no obvious degradation in performance.
Click to expand...

Yeah it's strange. It probably has something to do with APFS or the type of SSD installed. I a have Toshiba (TS256GSSD340K). But I really don't know what's going on here.
 
baconwizard said:
Hmm that's weird. I thought the whole point of the FileVault encryption is to encrypt your drive and lock it with a key or passcode that YOU only know so you are the only one who has access to your data. Would seem pretty obvious that you need some sort a key or passcode for that. I chose the same passcode as my login just for convenience. Maybe try to use your AppleID to retrieve your key like stated?
Click to expand...
Actually, maybe that is what I did and since it was just an option and not something I entered it doesn't stand out with me at the moment. I just don't want any issues in the event I need to recover my drive. Knowing that I selected "use my apple ID to retrieve passcode gives me some peace of mind.
 
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