[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"'FileVault' is the Mac OS X’s security safe for your home directory. If you activate this (and it’s built into the system), you will automatically lock up and encrypt your home directory every time you sign out, log off or shut down. If someone else steals your computer, there’s no way they’re going to find anything in your home directory, because everything is encrypted and locked up tight."

FileVault works well and does a superb job of encrypting your disk. But--and this is a big whopper of a but--it will seriously cripple Time Machine. Time Machine will still back up your disk, but you will not be able to browse back in time for that file you deleted in a moment of idiocy. And if you take your old hard disk out, forget about accessing it externally via a USB adaptor.

Bottom line: FileVault is great if you deal in state secrets. For the rest of us, it exacts a non-trivial price. I recommend not using it unless institutional policy demands you perform full-disk encryption.

[Star Traveler]

Yeah, I can see there are some “use problems” with FileVault, but if one knows about it, it may still be useful. If I were carrying around a laptop and using it elsewhere, I would like to have FileVault activated. You can turn it on and then off, too. If it were stolen, FileVault would keep your information locked up forever, as far as anyone else was concerned (i.e., the thief).

Also, if I were sending the computer in to be worked on, I would like to have FileVault activated.

But, in addition to the above, the reason why I mentioned PGP was to give another alternative to keeping your information locked up. :-)

Oh, and about using USB, that’s one reason why I like having FireWire... :-)