Anyone use FileVault here?

[Sunnz]

Does Mac people usually use it?

Coming from a PC world, I seen it in System Preference and thought it was a good idea.

Every 2~4 days, it ask me if I want to save space that FileVault is not using during Shut Down... is this normal behaviour when FileVault has been turned on?

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

I would not recommend using FileVault unless you need to secure extremely sensitive information, or work for the government and they require you use it. No hacker or computer thief gives two craps about your family photos or Word documents, and I'll assume that you do NOT store information such as your social security number or credit card numbers in your home folder.

A simple search for "FileVault" here in the forums should turn up a lot of threads on it.

Yes, asking to recover space is completely normal. You should do this when it asks, and you should never, ever interrupt it (by powering off, sleeping the computer, etc.).

 

[dmetzcher]

Yes, asking to recover space is completely normal. You should do this when it asks, and you should never, ever interrupt it (by powering off, sleeping the computer, etc.).

I assume that the OS is compressing the sparse disk image when it asks to do this? Is that correct? I don't use it myself, mainly because I don't completely trust sparse disk images, and I know FileVault creates one for to store the data. I use sparse disk images for backups, but I duplicate them whenever I create one, just in case. I've lost one or two in the past, and it's annoying.

 

[Sunnz]

So if I DON'T use filevault, would there be any disk image containing my stuff on my disk?

I wanted to just copy the disk image to my backup device to backup my home folder.

 

[eric2006]

If you don't use filevault, all your files will be there, just not in an image. They'll be in a folder. It's probably not a good idea to use a filevault image to backup things, because it can be tricky to open them up again if your system dies, and if there is an error in the image, you're toast.

 

[dmetzcher]

So if I DON'T use filevault, would there be any disk image containing my stuff on my disk?

I wanted to just copy the disk image to my backup device to backup my home folder.

You can always make a disk image of your home folder, and then copy it to your backup drive. You could even write an Automator workflow, fairly easily, that would create the image, and then move it to a folder on your backup drive. I use a similar workflow to back up a folder (development) on my internal drive to my backup drive. It creates the disk image, moves it to the backup drive, and even removes older backup files, so I don't have to worry about all the backups eating up disk space.

 

[Sunnz]

I haven't really tried Automator yet as I only have got my Mac for less than a month... it looks very complicated...

 

[dmetzcher]

I haven't really tried Automator yet as I only have got my Mac for less than a month... it looks very complicated...

Depends on what you want to do with it, but it's not complicated at all, compared with AppleScript, in general. There are many tutorials available on the Web, as well as several books. For what you need, Automator sounds like a good solution. Check into it, and see if you like using it.