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Old 06-26-2006, 08:09 PM
rdlsmith rdlsmith is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 47
Yet another FileVault Question

In a post for 2004 it was recommended to NOT use FileVault. I may not understand it completely but from what I've read it's the only way to really protect your data.

The firmware password only protects the data on that particular Mac. True? Firmware was offered as an alternative.

Once the data is backed up say to a Firewire doing a copy, anyone could then mount the bootable image and get to the data. Yes/No? If you use Sparse, you can't mount it. Yes/No?

If you use FVault, you run a risk in trying to restore, the backups take up more space and there may be some other bad things. True even if you create a non-FV account and use that to backup?

I'm just trying to find a totally secure system that will let me back and restore easily.

From all my reading I've come up with the following. Please let me know if you think it would work and also be secure.

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1. Turn on firmware password. This will protect your data while on that machine.

2. Create a bootable partition on a firewire big enough to hold a brand new OS X install. I made one at 15g and then left off the printer drivers/extra fonts/languages/etc. I think it would be better to make one at 20 Gig and to allow for updates. For example, my system discs are at 10.4.4. I've since upgraded through the software update to 10.4.6.

3. Install Super Duper on the new install.

4. Backup and only use only sparse images. You can password protect those and if you have a registered copy, you can add to them if you want. You can also keep different versions of them if you choose to do that. The only thing you can't do is boot from them.

5. Restore. In the event of a HD failure you could mount the copy of OS X created in step 2 and then restore from a sparse image back to a new HD.

If someone walks off with your Firewire drive they'll get the hardware, a fresh copy of OS X and that's about it. The backups should run clean because FV was never used.

Did I miss something? Will that work?

Randall
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