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Performance Feedback Requested with FileVault and 2012 MBP
- Thread starter Auggie
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I've had FV running on a 2012 rMBP myself and its been buttery smooth. I will say that I've not upgraded that laptop and its sitting on El Cap. I find no benefit to moving beyond that. I only mention that tidbit as my user experience is based on El Cap for the 2012 laptop
Care to elaborate? I've never encountered any issues with File Vault, and I had more than hundred machines in my care.
Such as? More details please
Exactly, that's the intended affect, encrypt your data, to keep it safe. There's no other problem that that File Vault is trying to solve. Its encrypting your data, i.e., keeping your personal info protected and it does that extremely well. I don't have the volume of Macs as @leman, but I experience echos his. Its a seamless well implemented feature that I've not had any issues with.
Since you are dissenting, and that's fine, please provide more info and details other then its a bloody nightmare and/or its terrible.
Yes, I'm curious as the negative aspects of FV. Once such concern I had was data corruption and recovery. But having gone through a couple drive failures, including a recent SSD failure, since I synchronize my data with my desktop, I always have a good data source to do a complete install from.
As anyone should have surmised, I presently have not used FV on any of my Macs since the beginning of Apple, but only now am contemplating it just on my laptop in the very remote chance I may lose it (I've never lost a Mac due to negligence or theft). Its just that in recent years as SSDs have grown in size to the point where I've now started to have a complete copy of my entire desktop Mac's data on my laptop, I realized if such data was to be compromised, it would contain all my personal and financial data. So either I must completely trim down such data on my laptop to the bare essentials, or implement FV.
As anyone should have surmised, I presently have not used FV on any of my Macs since the beginning of Apple, but only now am contemplating it just on my laptop in the very remote chance I may lose it (I've never lost a Mac due to negligence or theft). Its just that in recent years as SSDs have grown in size to the point where I've now started to have a complete copy of my entire desktop Mac's data on my laptop, I realized if such data was to be compromised, it would contain all my personal and financial data. So either I must completely trim down such data on my laptop to the bare essentials, or implement FV.
It doesn’t really have any negative aspects to it, save for the chance that you forget your password and lose your recovery key. And as to data recovery... it’s not something one should rely on, ever. The only proper data recovery method is redundant data storage and backups. Apple gives you one of the best and most convenient backup tools on the market with time machine, use it.
No need to preach to the choir regarding recovery; I've got tons of backup/redundancy, though not through Time Machine until yesterday. I've been through all sorts of FUBAR'd situations and had my share of irreplaceable losses over the decades...
I enabled FileVault2 on my Early 2011 15" MacBook Pro six or eight months ago. It has the original Apple-supplied 256GB SSD. At the time it was running El Capitan; it's now running High Sierra.
I did not notice any performance change. Nor did my son or my spouse. I've not had any problems at all related to FV being enabled. Of course, I have a good back up regimen just in case. The machine gets used mainly for typical web browsing, email, YouTube viewing, Photos viewing, and rather undemanding gaming (e.g, Minecraft and various Steam games).
The only noticeable difference is the startup sequence when you power it on. Before FV, macOS would boot up before showing the login screen (I have verbose boot set so I see a lot of boot-up messages). After FV, the machine very quickly goes to the login screen, and only after you enter a user password does macOS go through its bootup process. This is because a user password is required to retrieve the storage decryption key. The machine can't boot until the storage is decrypted!
I did not notice any performance change. Nor did my son or my spouse. I've not had any problems at all related to FV being enabled. Of course, I have a good back up regimen just in case. The machine gets used mainly for typical web browsing, email, YouTube viewing, Photos viewing, and rather undemanding gaming (e.g, Minecraft and various Steam games).
The only noticeable difference is the startup sequence when you power it on. Before FV, macOS would boot up before showing the login screen (I have verbose boot set so I see a lot of boot-up messages). After FV, the machine very quickly goes to the login screen, and only after you enter a user password does macOS go through its bootup process. This is because a user password is required to retrieve the storage decryption key. The machine can't boot until the storage is decrypted!