Richard from France

Q: About utility of pass-protected folder when disk is encrypted

Dear everyone,

 

I recently got my hands on a new SSHD internal drive and decided to encrypt it using filevault. As I keep some important documents on my mac, I used to create password-protected folders by means of a disk image with Disk Utility. Now, my question simply is: is there any utility about creating such encrypted folders as the whole disk itself is already encrypted? Would this add valuable new protection?

 

Thank you very much in advance,

 

Richard

 

Specs: MBP mid-09 13" 2.26GHz with internal WD 1To SSHD

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2009), OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Sep 10, 2016 11:35 AM

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Q: About utility of pass-protected folder when disk is encrypted

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  • by Grant Bennet-Alder,Solvedanswer

    Grant Bennet-Alder Grant Bennet-Alder Sep 12, 2016 9:30 AM in response to Richard from France
    Level 9 (60,884 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 12, 2016 9:30 AM in response to Richard from France

    If your whole disk is encrypted, then the only way anyone (including YOU) gets to look at the contents of your Volume is to provide your Disk password, which we hope is a long&strong password, not just a convenient short one. Depending on just how paranoid you are, you may fell there is additional Utility on further encrypting additional items. But to gain additional security, the password for your further-encrypted disks must not be readily available on your simply-encypted disk.

     

    Most Users have very good success with encrypted Volumes. They succeed in protecting their files from the person mostly likely to access them -- themselves. DO NOT ENCRYPT YOUR DISK WITHOUT CREATING A TRUSTED BACKUP!! The encryption is strong -- there is not "rescue" for an encrypted Volume that goes bad for any reason, including Disk Failure.

  • by Richard from France,

    Richard from France Richard from France Sep 12, 2016 9:33 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 12, 2016 9:33 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

    Grant Bennet-Alder,

     

    Thank you for your clear answer. I had the feeling that I was heading towards paranoïa with this idea, although I also asked out of curiosity.

     

    Regards,

     

    R