How to protect your Mac data

Question

Level 1

4 points

How to protect your Mac data

Hello folks,

I have password protected my Mac.

I'm wondering if there is anything else I can do to prevent people accessing my data in the event the computer is stolen from my home? All of my passwords are in the keychain, and all of my files, photos etc are stored on the harddrive. It's all backed up to an external harddrive which is kept away from the computer, so the recovery is not an issue. People accessing my personal files is the issue!

Cheers

MacBook Pro 15, 2.0 i7, 4GB, OS X 10.6

Posted on Aug 25, 2013 6:34 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Aug 25, 2013 6:44 PM in response to BenBarclay

Repair the hard drive and permissions.
Upgrade to Mountain Lion.
Clone a bootable backup.
Boot from the backup.
Reformat the hard drive as an Encrypted Drive.
Restore the backup.

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Answer 2

BenBarclay Author

Level 1

4 points

Aug 27, 2013 9:19 PM in response to Kappy

Thanks Kappy.

How does that vary to filevault?

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Aug 27, 2013 10:19 PM in response to BenBarclay

FileVault still protects the Home folder as it has but now you can encrypt the entire drive. If you have a FileVault protected Home folder you should decrypt it before you upgrade to Mountain Lion. Be sure to read up carefully about the new FileVault and security passwords. Losing a password will leave your files inaccessible.

OS X- About FileVault 2

OS X Lion- Using FileVault 2 and Lion Recovery

OS X- How to create and deploy a recovery key for FileVault 2

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