File Vault problem

mattb45 wrote:
I have have updated my macbook to snow leopard and turned on filevault to protect my content. I dont have much on there but I do use imovie. for some reason now my hard disk is full,

please clarify this. select the whole hard drive and enter command+i. in the popup it will list the capacity and used space. what are those numbers. also, when you are logged in select the house icon in the sidebar of any finder window and enter command+i. read off the capacity and used space for your filevaulted home directory. what are those numbers?

i have tried to turn off file vault thinking thats the problem but i need 90 gig of free space to do it. I have tried to take away some content but it is not showing as added free space. Has file vault doubled my content,
I did not delete the old files when switching on file vault.

what do you mean by that?

Can any one help.......thanks

Have you restarted/logged out since you made those changes?

those numbers really make no sense at all. your home directory shows used space bigger than the total hard drive capacity.
is it really that big? you should have some rough idea about how much stuff you've got in your home directory.

looks like the encrypted sparse bundle with the filevaulted home directory might be damaged. this is why I hate filevault. any problem like this is very hard to fix and can easily lead to total data loss. first, verify your hard drive with disk utility. if it reports any errors boot from the snow leopard install dvd and repair the hard drive. also, you should try repairing the encrypted sparse bundle. this is tricky to do.

you'll need to do it from a different account because a volume needs to be unmounted to be repaired. make a new admin account, log out of the main account and and log into the new one.

then enter the following command in terminal

sudo hdiutil attach /users/username/username.sparsebundle

put the short name of your filevaulted user in the command. you'll first need to enter your admin password for the new user and then the password for your main user.

if this does not work and there are any errors stop and post back here.

if the command succeeds it will mount the virtual volume with your filevaulted home directory. then run the following terminal command

sudo diskutil repairvolume /volumes/username

if it works eject the virtual volume, log back into your filevaulted account and check the volume sizes again for the disk and the home directory.

Matt,

File-Vault does not have any more or less problems than OSX does in general. It is stable.

Your home folder shows that larger size because File-vault is a disk image. When it is created, it is created with a logical max-capacity larger than your physical disk then it expands and shrinks as you use it. Its initial space is only as large as necessary to contain the original data.

Some things to be aware of. When you place things into the trash, the space is not immediately released. Most of the time, after you empty the trash you will need to log-off to see any appreciable disk space availability. This is because when you logoff the system cleans up the sparse image for the file-vaulted user. This is usually not a problem unless you are very tight on disk space, or you are working with very large files.

File-vault itself is just as efficient with disk space as a non-file-vaulted user profile. File-vault does not take more or less space except during the creation or elimination of a file-vaulted profile. Which is usually a one-time act.

Try emptying the trash and logging out and then check your over-all disk space.

Secondly, I believe you said that you did a system upgrade at some time. Depending on the type of installation you did, you may have a "Previous System" folder in your users folder. Or more then one from previous upgrades. Check for its existence and size. You can save it out to a DVD and/or trash it. This contains settings and some data from the upgrade. You only need it if something becomes missing from the old system to the new. I always keep mine for a year, but if you need the disk space, just move it off-line.

-Alan

the OP reports used space in the home directory of near 300GB and the capacity of the whole hard drive of 160GB. there is nothing normal about that.

V.K.,

The size will vary, but it is normal.

A file-vaulted sparse image (home directory) does not relate in size to the physical disk.

-Alan

Alan Edinger wrote:
V.K.,

The size will vary, but it is normal.

A file-vaulted sparse image (home directory) does not relate in size to the physical disk.

I know that the capacity of the sparse bundle can be huge. but what about used space? that can not be bigger than the capacity of the hard drive the bundle is sitting in.

-Alan

V.K.,

OSX reports; through any of the following: Disk Utility, Get Info, Activity Monitor using the Disk usage tab, The size of the sparse image & the hard drive free space.

Reported on a mounted file-vaulted image:

• The sparse image capacity is reported.
• The free space of the hard drive (not the sparse image.)

I think there should be more information to make this clearer, but this has always been the reporting method.

Its the nature of a mounted DMG. If un-mounted, the physical size would be reported, if mounted then the capacity size is reported because that is what is presented via the FS to the OS.

On a file-vaulted user profile, the associated sparse DMG will always be mounted when logged-in and this is the only state that you can check the home directory. This is the nature of the file-vault profile security.

I'm not arguing with you, it is just what it is.

-Alan

Alan Edinger wrote:
V.K.,

OSX reports; through any of the following: Disk Utility, Get Info, Activity Monitor using the Disk usage tab, The size of the sparse image & the hard drive free space.

Reported on a mounted file-vaulted image:

• The sparse image capacity is reported.
• The free space of the hard drive (not the sparse image.)

that's not all that's reported. when a disk image is mounted you can also see the capacity and the used space of the mounted virtual volume. that's true for any disk image. in the case of the filevaulted homedirectory of the OP the mounted virtual volume is reporting used space bigger than the total capacity of the hard drive containing the sparse bundle. that's what I've been repeateadly and thus far apparently unsuccessfully trying to point out.

I think there should be more information to make this clearer, but this has always been the reporting method.

I'm not arguing with you, it is just what it is.

-Alan

that's what I've been repeateadly and thus far apparently unsuccessfully trying to point out.

I understand what you are pointing out V.K. I always did from your first post.

Please go back an re-read my last post I added some info because I clicked the edit button before I was done. Maybe the added info will make it clearer.

To reiterate, a sparsebundle image can be almost any size. OSX always makes them larger than the actual hard drive. When it becomes mounted as a working home directory the file system reports the used space as nearly the same as the max capacity.

I could theorize why this is necessary, but I'd probably be wrong.

-Alan

thanks for the explanation. but I must say that this does not agree with what i see in practice. I just made a new sparse bundle with max size 100GB and put just a few files in it. the mounted disk image reports used space of 200MB. I often play with sparse bundles and that's how it's always been. I've never seen it report used space close to sparse bundle capacity.

Yes, I know V.K.,

If you create a sparse / sparsbundle and mount it. It will reflect the contents correctly. It is mounted, but it is not a logged-into volume.

.

The real test would be to create a new user on your system and file-vault it.

By way of example:
Here is such an example that I created a few minutes ago.
The newly created user is vaulttest.
The actual size of the boot volume on that machine is 320g
The OSX partition is about 300g
.

1.) This screen shot is of the native hard drive. The size and remaining space reflect actual hard values.
http://grab.by/pQ1

2.) Now, this shot is of the the newly created account ("vaulttest") I did nothing other than create the account and login to it. I did no object manipulation of any kind.
http://grab.by/pQL

3.) To follow up, here is the get info on the home volume for my "vaulttest" user.
http://grab.by/pQQ

You can see that the file-vaulted user has an allocated capacity of ~607g of which most of it (~563g) is used.

This example is on Snow Leopard, but it operates the same on any OSX version that supports File-Vault. I do run other versions.

Hope this helps in your understanding/unbelief (lol)

-Alan