Advice please

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Hi a friend of mine is well into apple gear,he gave me a tip today to Turn off FileVault to gain a lot of space.
Should I listen to him?.
What do the experts say
Thanks David
 

IWT


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Hi Tomos

There is some debate about whether FileVault (FV) ultimately takes up significant additional space. Have a read of this debate on another forum where this question was discussed: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/does-filevault-take-up-more-space.687401/

NB Some say that it takes up around 100MB, which is nothing; but there other comments saying "To turn it on or off, you need to have an amount of free disk space which is equal to or greater than the total size of your home folder." I'm assuming that is temporary rather than permanent - ie it is "working" space needed to execute turning FV on or off.

I would pose your question another way - if I may? Why do you need FV in the First Place? Interesting and differing viewpoints on that!

Ian

PS Just for general info: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204837
 
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Turn it off, regardless; it was switched on when I got my latest MBP and caused it to seize up.
 
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Hi a friend of mine is well into apple gear,he gave me a tip today to Turn off FileVault to gain a lot of space.
Should I listen to him?.


Why do you even have it enabled other than Apple trying to force you to use it??

If you don't work with INTERPOL etc. or some such place with some super secret stuff, you probably don't need it. Oh yes, or if you're really paranoid!!! :Smirk:





- Patrick
======
 

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I agree with Patrick and Sue. Turn it off and leave it off. Unless you have MI6 data on your hard drive, you don't need it. If you forget your password or passphrase, your data is toast. Again, turn it off.
 
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+1!!! Turn it off.

Lisa
 
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Hi a friend of mine is well into apple gear,he gave me a tip today to Turn off FileVault to gain a lot of space.
Should I listen to him?.


FileVault 2 (the most recent version) uses a fixed amount of space and no more beyond the amount of space your data usually takes up when not encrypted. I believe that in no case is it larger than 650MB. However, it might temporarily use more space than this, but it will soon be recovered.

Is it worth turning off FileVault to recover that much space? Folks debate that. Have a look at this discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/35c42s/should_i_use_filevault/

That discussion offers some good points. You don't have to be a secret agent to benefit from having your data encrypted. Users often have banking information on their computer, tax return data, credit card data, business records, private correspondence, information that would make it easy to steal your identity, etc. And laptops get stolen all the time.

Personally, I'm in the middle. I don't recommend FileVault, but I think that your important/sensitive files or folders should be encrypted. You can encrypt them with Disk Utility, but it's a bit of a pain to use. This free utility makes the process as easy and fast as it can be:

Crypt3 (free)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crypt3/id413756594?mt=12
http://dekorte.com/projects/shareware/Crypt
(Instantly encrypt and password protect your files or folders. Open them with a double-click and enter the password. Not even the FBI can break this encryption.)
 
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Tomos
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Thanks to all.
Sorry for delay didn't get an email notification.
David. Will turn off nothing extremely important on my MacBook, nothing to hide.
 

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