[dnanian]

In general, Timothy, you should create a non-FileVaulted account to perform backups from. While you *can* back up a FileVault account from "inside" it, the resulting backup has the hidden FileVault volume "mounted", so logging into that image in a recover situation can be weird.

If you log out and into a non-FV account, the image is closed and "put away", and the backup is a lot "cleaner".

Note that, as you'd probably expect, Smart Update doesn't work as well with FileVault. Since your user files are stored in one "big image" under FileVault, that entire image needs to be backed up each time any files on it change. That takes a lot more time than, say, just backing up a modified document.