Need a partition scheme (encrypted)

[cmm]

Hi all,

I'm trying to set up a new partition scheme for all my storage. I just purchased another drive and will buy a 1 or 1.5TB drive next week. I'd like to encrypt certain partitions. Please read on...

Hopefully someone can help me. This is my current setup:

Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2 465Gi 407Gi 58Gi 88% /
devfs 113Ki 113Ki 0Bi 100% /dev
map -hosts 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /net
map auto_home 0Bi 0Bi 0Bi 100% /home
/dev/disk1s2 186Gi 183Gi 2.8Gi 99% /Volumes/Wittgenstein
/dev/disk2s2 149Gi 147Gi 1.9Gi 99% /Volumes/Plato

Plato is my iPod - I use 40GB for music, the rest for backing up files.
Wittgenstein is my backup. I exclude backups of ~/Music, another big DIR and ~/Movies and it has room to backup everything else.

I also have an 8GB USB stick that I've named "mnemosyne".

What I am purchasing

I am waiting for my new 500GB 7200 drive to arrive, which will replace the current 500GB main drive. I also purchased a 32GB flash drive.

What I'm getting in the near future

I'm purchasing a 1TB or 1.5TB internal drive and building an external HDD from it within the next two weeks. I'd like to split it to 500GB for backups, the rest for media storage.

What I need

I'd like to encrypt my current /System dir, my ~/Documents and all preferences from my my Applications.

How I'd like to see this happen

I've heard filevault is prone to errors. Is this true? Are there any other full disk encryption options for mac? Would dm-crypt work through macports without corrupting my filesystem? Can I use truecrypt and create an encrypted container of say (what is now) ~/Documents

Creating the partition scheme

Can someone help me create this partition scheme? This is what I know I want:

/Music partition 60GB
/Pictures partition 60GB
/Movies partition 250GB or rather separate partitions for Sports 50GB, TV 80GB, 120 GB for Movies
/Documents 65GB

Questions

1) Can I resize a partition once I've created it if there's physical space left on the HDD?
2) Should I leave some space without a partition? Or should I just name it something benign and use it as a "dropbox"
3) What options do I have for encryption on a mac?
4) Is filevault prone to errors? Any benchmarking tests out there?
5) Can I use dm-crypt through macports and have a FDE setup that won't fail because it's through macports and not native? In other words, I realize all encryption schemes can fail, but I'd like to minimize risk.
6) How would I have some movies on my main HDD and others on the external volume? Is that possible? Or would I need to create two partitions for that? So, say, I want to store 40GB of everything that is currently in ~/Movies on my main HDD. Just create a partition for that, and then another partition on the external volume at 210GB?
7) How do I create separate partitions in mac?
8) How do I easily mount all partitions from all hard drives?
9) Is rsync and a script my best option for encrypting backups since Timemachine has no security whatsoever for backups?
10) What filesystem should I use? (I'm only using OS X on my macbook)
11) Any sample partition map you could share with me that will help me build this properly?
12) How do I set up a link so Mac OS X will read the partitions like they are now and display over on the left side of Finder.app as they show now? I.e. a list of Desktop, $username, Applications, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures

Thanks!

 

[Gregg2]

13) There's really no technical reason to partition a Mac using OSX.

Really.

Good luck getting 12 answers! I've found that two questions in the same post or e-mail is often more than people can handle.

 

[angelwatt]

Answers in red. For clarification, Google.

Questions

1) Can I resize a partition once I've created it if there's physical space left on the HDD?
Yes, with the proper software.

2) Should I leave some space without a partition? Or should I just name it something benign and use it as a "dropbox"
Just name it.

3) What options do I have for encryption on a mac?
Not many. FileVault, TrueCrypt, PGP, etc.

4) Is filevault prone to errors? Any benchmarking tests out there?
Older version were, but Leopard+ fixed them. My coworkers and I have been using it for years without incident, but as with any setup, backups are a good idea.

5) Can I use dm-crypt through macports and have a FDE setup that won't fail because it's through macports and not native? In other words, I realize all encryption schemes can fail, but I'd like to minimize risk.
Don't know.

6) How would I have some movies on my main HDD and others on the external volume? Is that possible? Or would I need to create two partitions for that? So, say, I want to store 40GB of everything that is currently in ~/Movies on my main HDD. Just create a partition for that, and then another partition on the external volume at 210GB?
You can store whatever you want on an external HD. Not sure why you think otherwise.

7) How do I create separate partitions in mac?
Disk Utility.

8) How do I easily mount all partitions from all hard drives?
Automagically.

9) Is rsync and a script my best option for encrypting backups since Timemachine has no security whatsoever for backups?
I use Carbon Copy Cloner, which is rsync based. I also do some rsync on my own for some backups. For encryption, you just have to make sure the encrypted volume is mounted when the backup runs.

10) What filesystem should I use? (I'm only using OS X on my macbook)
Might as well use HFS (Extended Journaled) it's Mac only.

11) Any sample partition map you could share with me that will help me build this properly?
Nope

12) How do I set up a link so Mac OS X will read the partitions like they are now and display over on the left side of Finder.app as they show now? I.e. a list of Desktop, $username, Applications, Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures
Automagically. Partitions mount when the drive is attached, just like any drive you connect.

Thanks!

 

[cmm]

Thanks. Which OSs have you not had problems with vis-a-vis Filevault? 10.6 hasn't been out "years"...

 

[angelwatt]

Thanks. Which OSs have you not had problems with vis-a-vis Filevault? 10.6 hasn't been out "years"...

Well, I said Leopard+ (10.5+), not Snow Leopard. Tiger's FileVault used a plain DMG, whereas since then, it uses a sparseimage, which is broken up into multiple files, which keeps data corruption to a minimum.

 

[cmm]

Well, I said Leopard+ (10.5+), not Snow Leopard. Tiger's FileVault used a plain DMG, whereas since then, it uses a sparseimage, which is broken up into multiple files, which keeps data corruption to a minimum.

Yeah, forgot. Slight oversight, thanks.

 

[Sydde]

For the movies, if you want them to all appear to be in ~/Movies you could consider using symlinks to the movies on the external drive or a symlink to the folder that contains the movies on the external drive. I have used symlinks to make iTunes think movies on an external drive were living on the internal drive. You cannot use Mac Aliases for this.