disappearing free hdd space
i notice that after starting up filevault that i'm loosing free space. i'm missing about 10gigs, and that's after disappearance of additional 10gig in user folder. the view info says i used up about 30gigs for users folder but my home folder only says 20gig and i'm the only user on my 17. so where the hell did that 10gig go?? i also calculated all major folders that take up hdd space like application, users, library and such and i'm short another 10gig. any idea what the problem is?
Comments
I'm late running for a bus, so...
1) It's okay
2) Nothings' wrong
3) Brad, you wanna continue?
Here's a post by Smircle that explains this issue:
FileVault works on encrypted disk images which are a bit different than ordinary disk images. For performance and security reasons, FileVault has to do some disk access a bit different than the ordinary file system layer.
Since disk images are files that contain a file system, they cannot easily grow and shrink like eg. Photoshop files. Disk images can grow, but if you delete a file in the middle, you effectively create a hole which could be reclaimed either by recreating the filesystem organization inside the disk image (possibility of data loss if something goes wrong) or by recreatingn the whole image. Since the whole information has to be decrypted and recrypted, a hiccup occurs and the system stalles for some seconds if you try to write a file.
To ameliorate this, Apple chose to mark the deleted files as deleted inside the image without rewriting the image file. This is done on logout, hence the dialog asking you if you wish to consolidate the image file.
It should be noted that FileVault is not intended for everybody. It is only meant for people who travel enough and/or have sensitive enough information that they absolutely need their data to be completely secured. In the past, if your hardware was physically in the possession of someone else, that person could fairly easily get your data off by simply hooking up a different boot drive. FileVault prevents this from happening, but it comes at the above penalty as well as a slight performance hit.
As I said before, it's only intended for use by the people that really need it. If keeping your files secure is more important the system performance and the chance that you may actually lose those files, then FileVault is for you. If not, then you should switch back to a regular user account.