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Old 08-22-2012, 11:50 AM
Kampernaut Kampernaut is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2010
Posts: 8
Mountain Lion, FileVault 2 and Encrypted Backup Drives

I experimented with FV 2 on Lion with and unencrypted external drive and it worked fine.

Now I want my external backup drive encrypted too.

I've found over 100 threads on encryption in this forum and my head is spinning now. Hopefully you can help me clear up my remaining confusion.

1. If encrypt my external backup drive, will I be able to boot from it or not?

2. If I understand correctly, I must first reformat my external drive to have encrypted contents. However what format should I choose: the normal or the case sensitive version?

3. What passphrase should I use for the encryption? Is it the same as the one I used for FV 2 or should it be different? If the latter why?

4. When will I be prompted for the external backup drive's passphrase? If the clone is bootable, will it be when I select it as the startup volume?

5. If you accidentally disconnect an external encrypted drive without ejecting it properly first, is there any extra risk introduced by the encryption compared with improperly detaching a normal one?

6. Generally with FV2, must I shut down the computer to get the disk encrypted or sleep enough (lid shut on a MacBook Pro)?

7. Apart from the risk of forgetting the password to your encrypted backup, is there any reason you wouldn't encrypt it?

Thanks

K
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