Filevault Annoyance During Logoff

kriss9

Registered
About 80% of the time I log off Mac OS X, I get a message that says: "Your home folder, which is protected by FileVault, is using more dis space than necessary..."

This is highly annoying as I am used to clicking shutdown or restart and leaving. Is there a way to prevent this message or preferable, automatically have OS X perform this maintenance.
 
No. FileVault is a sparse image. For encryption needs, you are better off using Disk Utility and creating an encrypted disk.
 
I would highly recommend turning off FileVault unless you store credit card numbers in your home folder or work for the government and have Top Secret clearance.

There's no need to use FileVault in a home or casual business environment unless people are out to get you -- it's overkill, plus I guarantee you will have problems with it in the future, possibly even including data loss.

While FileVault is a great feature and appeals nicely to the paranoid types, it's just not necessary: no one wants to read your resume or your recipies, they couldn't care less about your family photos nor your music. And, if those kinds of things fell into the "wrong hands," big deal -- hackers want the good stuff, not a family photo album and some Phil Collins MP3s.

On the other hand, if you do work in a sensitive environment (nuclear secrets, FBI, CIA, IRS, credit company) and have sensitive documents on your hard drive that could cause physical/monetary/mental damage if they fell into the wrong hands, by all means leave FileVault on. If you're a casual home user that stores a few business documents on their hard drive, turn it off -- it's more of a risk than a safety net.
 
If its more of a risk than a safety net, then why use it at all? Also Randman, I thought Filevault encrypted the contents of your home folder for you?
 
It does encrypt the contents of your home folder, but is finicky about the health of your system. If you're not the type to do routine maintenance, keep complete and accurate backups and keep your system in tip-top shape as well as know how to navigate the UNIX underpinnings of the OS, I would still recommend turning it off. Again, unless you do top-secret work, the contents of your home folder is pretty much useless and uninteresting to a hacker.

Rather than encrypting the home folder, simply use a hard-to-guess password for your account and make sure your iBook never leaves your sight when in public. That's much better protection than FileVault.

It's not necessarily a risk, but something that (I think) average users don't need nor should activate. It's like armor-plating your car for no reason other than the fact that armor plating provides more protection than regular steel -- useful for an international diplomat or the President, but simply just overkill for the average driver. We don't wear suits of armor to work -- we leave that to the warriors who need it. We don't have electronic locks on 1-foot thick steel doors to our houses -- we leave that to the banks who need it. We don't encrypt our Elton John music files or our resumes in Word format or our home movies because we don't need to, and it's an unnecessary risk to do so, since encryption can fail... hard drives can fail... computers can fail.

Just keep a good backup of the data and leave it unencrypted.
 
Just for the record, my environment must be as secure as possible without sacrificing too much functionality, performance, or ease of use. So, I guess you wouldn't consider me the average user. Put it like this...you don't have to be the president to have enemies...if you thought your life was in danger and you were in a hostile environment, would you put on that suit of armor just in case?

More importantly, my question IS NOT ANSWERED ::angel:: . Please, anyone who may have any idea on how to have Mac OS X automatically perform the maintenance, please let me know.
 
Apple recommends that FileVault not be used on home computers. It is more for mobile usage. If you have files you want to protect, create en encrypted disk image using Disk Utility. It does the same as FileVault but without creating the sparse image which doesn't reclaim space.

Both Jeff and I have have given you your answer. You can try compacting the sparse image via Terminal but there is not way to turn off that alert when FV is active.
 
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