I purchased my first iMac 6 months ago so I am still a newbie. I would like to encrypt both my iMac hard disk drive and the external hard disk drive that I use for my Time Machine which works great. Recently, I read that using File Vault will not encrypt your Time Machine backups which I believe will leave you vulnerable if someone breaks into your home and takes your Time Machine hard disk drive. I would like to try something but first I want to hear the opinions and experience of others. It is my understanding that File Vault encrypts the entire hard disk drive. Well, I found out that the iMac Disk Utility can create a Disk Image and encrypt individual folders using 128-bit AES encryption (I used this one.) or 256-bit AES encryption. Using Disk Utility, I encrypted a few folders. I believe that Time Machine should be able to back up these folders and thereby give me the encryption security I want on the Time Machine hard disk. Has anyone done this type of encrypting using both File Vault and Disk Utility? Could there be a conflict using these 2 encryption methods on the the same iMac hard disk?