File Vault Q?

guartho

Before leaving for Spring Break I turned on file vault on my user account. Today I installed a new HD and used Carbon Copy Cloner to move over to it. I'm shuffling my files around from some of my other drives, etc. I notice that things have to "copy" when I move them from another location on the drive to my home folder. Is this because they must be encrypted or is it a problem?



My pressing question is different though. When I go into the user folder there is my vaulted folder "mark" and now there is another labeled "mark 1" which appears to be my home folder as it was before I encrypted it. mark 1 does not show up on the login screen. Get-info on mark says it's just an alias, but when I view various folders in mark and mark1 they are different. When I change the content of the mark documents folder the mark1 documents folder remains the same. Does anyone know what's going on here?



Is this a result of file vault or moving to a new drive?



edit:



I just had the copying thing happen when I moved a folder from a location outside my home folder to another location outside my home folder.

wmf

Quote:

Originally posted by Guartho

I notice that things have to "copy" when I move them from another location on the drive to my home folder. Is this because they must be encrypted or is it a problem?

This is normal. FileVault is actually a virtual drive; when you drag something from one drive to another it causes a copy.

guartho

Quote:

Originally posted by wmf

This is normal. FileVault is actually a virtual drive; when you drag something from one drive to another it causes a copy.

Thanks, is it normal for it to happen when I move a file from one location on another physical drive to another location on that same other physical drive without it going through my vaulted home folder? And can I delete this "mark 1" folder, or will I totaly fubar myself if I do that?

curiousuburb

And unless you work for the NSA, or are in possession of life-threatening secrets, or don't trust the physical security of your computer while you're gone, exactly why are you using File Vault?



It's known to be quirky, eats drive space as virtual volumes, and if you forget your password... your data is pretty much permanently lost to you, since its encryption would take generations to crack.



Definitely not recommended for any but paranoid users.

guartho

Quote:

Originally posted by curiousuburb

or don't trust the physical security of your computer while you're gone, [/B]

That's the one! lol, I live in a dorm.

neutrino23

I don't work for NASA but I am happy to use FileVault. I have a lot of my financial related files and tax documents on my laptop. If it were lost or stolen then I could suffer very serious financial problems.



As far as I know FV maybe had a few quirks in the beginning but has worked fine since the last several updates. I know of no bugs which should keep you from using FV.



There are some behaviors that are unique to FV.



First, if you empty the trash of files in FV then you need to log out and log back in to recover that space. When you log out you are presented with an option to recover that space.



Second, it is treated as a separate drive so dragging files from FV to the root drive or vice versa results in a copy.



Third, some things won't work well with FV due to the time required to encrypt and decrypt the data. For example, importing video from a digital video camera over FW will stop after a short time. Recording a digital stream from an Eye TV 500 will not work. Probably similar cases of recording digital streams will not work. In such cases you need to write that data to some other part of the drive which is not encrypted.



Fourth, some Applescripts will no longer work. FV does a nice job of hiding from the user the fact that all your files are hidden away. The path to a folder on your home directory is different after turning on FV.



I think it would be better if Apple had allowed you to earmark a folder for encryption rather than forcing you to encrypt the entire home folder.



I'm looking forward to what improvements Tiger will bring to FV.

junkyard dawg

Quote:

Originally posted by neutrino23





I think it would be better if Apple had allowed you to earmark a folder for encryption rather than forcing you to encrypt the entire home folder.

They do.



Fire up Disk Utility. Create a new blank image. Select size, encryption, and format (sparse image if you want it to change in size as you add more to it). There you go, your very own encrypted vault for sensitive files. It's a heck of a lot easier to implement, IMO, than File Vault, since most of us don't need all our files encrypted.

jwink3101

I use the above message and then i use the applescript i got at http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...41207153823222 to compact it after use. Sparsedisk images grow but need to compacted either in terminal or another way. The link above is just an applescript front for the terminal command.

aplnub

I use File Vault on my iBook when I leave the country. I use encrypted disk images with long passwords (24+ characters) for added security.



However, wouldn't it be more likely that someone would just crack your password to login rather than try and break the filevault encryption?



Is it even possible to have a program try and crack your login password?



My login password is way less secure than my long passwords on my disk images.



Eric

neutrino23

Quote:

Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg

They do.



Fire up Disk Utility. Create a new blank image. Select size, encryption, and format (sparse image if you want it to change in size as you add more to it). There you go, your very own encrypted vault for sensitive files. It's a heck of a lot easier to implement, IMO, than File Vault, since most of us don't need all our files encrypted.

Thanks, I'll give it a try. I truly don't need to encrypt my entire home directory.

guartho

Quote:

Originally posted by Junkyard Dawg

They do.



Fire up Disk Utility. Create a new blank image. Select size, encryption, and format (sparse image if you want it to change in size as you add more to it). There you go, your very own encrypted vault for sensitive files. It's a heck of a lot easier to implement, IMO, than File Vault, since most of us don't need all our files encrypted.

I can't get a sparse image to grow as I add to it. It just says there's not enough space.

jwink3101

Make it have a capacity well over what you think you will want. The it will grow as needed. Rememeber to compact it when you are finished

pubguy

I think what happens when you create a sparse image is that the size you specify is the MAXIMUM size the image will grow to. For example, I just created a 2.8G blank sparse disk image. The actual file size is only 28M. So it will progressively take up more actual disk space as you add things into the image to a maximum size of 2.8G (in this example).

aplnub

Quote:

Originally posted by pubguy

I think what happens when you create a sparse image is that the size you specify is the MAXIMUM size the image will grow to. For example, I just created a 2.8G blank sparse disk image. The actual file size is only 28M. So it will progressively take up more actual disk space as you add things into the image to a maximum size of 2.8G (in this example).

But if you remove anything from inside the image, it does not reduce in size (unless you compact it). Not a big deal, but don't be shocked if you delete 400 meg out of it and the size does not descrease.