Just installed second hard drive (G5tower). Can I FileVault it?
I am new to having a second hard drive. I have a 2.7 G5 Tower with its stock 250GB drive and I just installed a 500GB harddrive in the B drive slot. I have filevault running on the main drive, but how do I get it going on the second one? Filevault is supposed to protect everything in your home folder, right? So if the second drive is not in or apart of the Home folder, how do I filevault the 500GB drive?
GENERAL FILEVAULT QUESTION: When you turn on filevault, does it cut your hard drive space in half? You know, in order to keep an extra scrambled version of your data or something like that? It just feels like I used up the space on my original drive really quickly.
I use some pretty heavy audio/video applications. Anyone have any advice about what stuff I should put on/run from the second hard drive? Performance of big time apps might be better if ran from the primary drive, right? If so, does that mean I should just put my sensitive work (files) on my unproteced (un-filevaulted) drive? <--- that is, if Filevault will not apply to a secondary drive.
Thanks!! Any suggestive advice would also be very much appreciated!
GENERAL FILEVAULT QUESTION: When you turn on filevault, does it cut your hard drive space in half? You know, in order to keep an extra scrambled version of your data or something like that? It just feels like I used up the space on my original drive really quickly.
I use some pretty heavy audio/video applications. Anyone have any advice about what stuff I should put on/run from the second hard drive? Performance of big time apps might be better if ran from the primary drive, right? If so, does that mean I should just put my sensitive work (files) on my unproteced (un-filevaulted) drive? <--- that is, if Filevault will not apply to a secondary drive.
Thanks!! Any suggestive advice would also be very much appreciated!
Comments
Originally posted by AppleComputer
I am new to having a second hard drive. I have a 2.7 G5 Tower with its stock 250GB drive and I just installed a 500GB harddrive in the B drive slot. I have filevault running on the main drive, but how do I get it going on the second one? Filevault is supposed to protect everything in your home folder, right?
Yeah, File Vault is limited to your home folder. You could move your home folder to the second drive, but you can't make it span over both.
So if the second drive is not in or apart of the Home folder, how do I filevault the 500GB drive?
You don't. You could create an encrypted sparse disk image on it, which is what FileVault does, except you'd have to do it manually.
GENERAL FILEVAULT QUESTION: When you turn on filevault, does it cut your hard drive space in half?
No, but there is overhead in both space and performance.
I use some pretty heavy audio/video applications.
Er. I wouldn't use FileVault then! It's going to seriously impact your performance with such disk I/O-heavy applications.
So here's my advice: only encrypt stuff that is really sensitive, and that doesn't need to be accessed too much. For your audio/video stuff, do not use encryption.
Also make sure you backup. (An encrypted sparseimage on the 500GB will be fine). If firevault or the disk goes, you can not recover your docs.
EDIT: I'm slow.
Chucky,
How would filevault slow me down say when I am running Logic Pro? Doesn't the decrypting of the entire home folder occur after login therefore freeing me up as I would be free if I had never turned FileVault on at all? I thought having a powerhouse computer like I have would make it so there wouldn't be a noticeable difference in using Filevault.
I am interested in hearing more about why I should not use FileVault.
(feels foolish asking so many questions) How do I set up sparse image?
I mainly do stuff with audio, but video is fun too!
"only encrypt stuff that is really sensitive"
What is the best/easiest/most secure way to encrypt a file or a non-home folder as an alternative to having FileVault encrypt everything?
Also, a new question:
I feel like I may have heard that certain apps or tasks are better ran from the upper "A" dock as opposed to on the lower "B" dock just because. Is that true? And I mean not even taking into consideration the seek/retrieval time comparison of the two drives. Is "A" dock simply a higher priority than "B" dock?
Thanks again! You both rule!
Doesn't the decrypting of the entire home folder occur after login
No. FileVault encrypts and decrypts as files as they are accessed in real time. This means whenever you open something, the computer decrypts it right there and when you save the file, it restores the encryption.
In your case, if the computer crashes while the Filevault user is logged in, everything could be freely accessible on restart. (Just my opinion. I'm not a big programmer.)