AWESOME time-saving tip for those who encrypt certain disks

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FMiguelez
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Joined: Sun Oct 24, 2004 10:01 pm
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AWESOME time-saving tip for those who encrypt certain disks

Post by FMiguelez »

Hello.

I am so thrilled to have discovered that one can do these encryptions literally in seconds rather than the typical "several hours to several days" times it normally takes, especially if your backup disks are not particularly fast.
Depending on your system specs and on the amount of data you're encrypting, I've read reports of people having observed a FULL week time! Most see several days.

This works for instantly encrypting non-bootable disks, Time Machine backups, and even bootable disks (but with a caveat for the bootable partitions).
Turns out, the order of operations makes ALL the difference, from seconds to days.

The trick is to encrypt the disk FIRST, when it's empty, with the "OSX Extended (Journaled Encrypted)" option. Doing this takes 30 seconds. Afterwards, simply clone or copy the disk normally. The result will be the same, but with big time savings.
Not doing it like this, and simply choosing "Encrypt Disk" from the Finder, or "Encrypt Disk" in the Time Machine menu, will make it take for ever, even days, because now it has to copy and then encrypt everything... And it doesn't even show a progress bar.

Depending on the amount of data you have to encrypt, it might even be much faster to clone the disk temporarily to another one (via a fast interface), nuke and encrypt the target, and clone the files back once encrypted.

I don't understand the details as to why this works and how it makes a difference, but it does, I just did it!

2 VERY IMPORTANT POINTS>
-- For Time Machine, doing it the way I described, still needs the "Encrypt Disk" option checked when doing it the first time, otherwise TM will start DECRYPTING the disk!
So make sure that option is checked, and TM will copy your info to the already encrypted disk as fast as it takes to copy without any further encryption.

-- For bootable partitions, what I described above also works instead of doing it via File Vault 2... technically... As long as you don't mind the clunky interface when being prompted to unlock the disk. When you do it normally via FV2, it sort of pairs the unlocking disk password and the log in password in one interface. Doing it the way I suggested works, but you must enter the password twice, as far as I can see up to now.
Now, please notice this is NOT the way Apple recommends doing the encryption for bootable drives.

Right now, since my office/business/entertainment computer is encrypted and has LOTS of big files, and I want to do it as closely as possibly as Apple recommends, via File Vault, I'll try cloning only the system and my account's Library folder, turn on File Vault without my big main files, and when it finishes, MUCH sooner, I'll clone the rest of the large files to the disk. This should take as long as a normal copy without long encryption times. I'll see how this goes.

That's it! So if the thought of waiting for days to encrypt your disks prevented you from doing it, it no longer applies! :)
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"In physics the truth is rarely perfectly clear, and that is certainly universally the case in human affairs. Hence, what is not surrounded by uncertainty cannot be the truth." ― Richard Feynman
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