Poll: Poll: Do you use FileVault on your Apple MacBook/MacBook Pro/MacBook Air?

[Feek]

It's not so important on a desktop because it's less likely to be lost or stolen but I wonder if you fine people out there in OcUK land have enabled FileVault on your laptop?

I obviously hope that nobody is going to pinch my MacBook but I set up FileVault as soon as I got it. It just seemed the right thing to do.

If you don't, is this a decision you've made specifically or have you just never bothered to enable it?

 

[Spleen Sauce]

I haven't yet, but I still haven't decided whether I'm keeping the machine (I'm in the first 2 weeks, return no questions asked period).

if I keep it, then I will do I think. Shouldn't be much of a performance hit with the T2 chip.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

No, I've read too many stories about the flashing question mark of doom after the logic board has died and the system won't boot from the encrypted SSD.

 

[TheUncookedPie]

I use Filevault on my iMac purely because it makes it less hassle wiping drives when I sell / drive dies.

 

[Feek]

No, I've read too many stories about the flashing question mark of doom after the logic board has died and the system won't boot from the encrypted SSD.

In over ten years of Mac ownership, I've never even heard of the flashing question mark of doom!

But that's what backups are for, right?

 

[Terminal_Boy]

Used FileVault for 10 years and the only issue I saw was the hour or so it took to encrypt 400GB of files on a 512GB SSD the first time I enabled it.

 

[shine]

I always enable FileVault on all my Macs and encrypt the Time Machine backups.

I have multiple backups of key data both in the cloud and local. My Macs are for my business and depending on the project/role I may have access to prod passwords so in the event of a theft I would want to happy that I had taken all reasonable steps to protect the data as well recover and continue my business.

 

[Hyburnate]

Yep, enabled. Company laptop with potentially PII on it.

 

[Deleted member 651465]

In over ten years of Mac ownership, I've never even heard of the flashing question mark of doom!

But that's what backups are for, right?

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204323

All my data is stored on a NAS with disk parity and which is backed up to the cloud. I wouldn't lose any data if the boot drive died, but I can see the use case for business laptops.

My work laptop (Dell) is boot encrypted but then there's a lot of sensitive info on there, so is justified.

 

[MrRockliffe]

I do on my work laptop, but not on my personal

 

[Phemo]

I don't have it enabled on mine and never bothered because of potential performance drops though I'm not sure how much of an issue this is with SSDs. I know my old work laptops with mech HDs ran like an absolute dog with Bitlocker enabled (or perhaps that was just my company's OS image and the junk they installed), but my latest one with an SSD is fine with Bitlocker.

I guess the Macs would be fine with FileVault but can anyone confirm whether or not there is any possible performance decrease from doing so? If not then I may as well enable it on mine.

 

[TheUncookedPie]

2014 5K iMac with superdrive - absolutely no difference with FileVault on or off.

 

[Feek]

No difference whatsoever that I can tell on my 2016 MacBook.

 

[shine]

I guess the Macs would be fine with FileVault but can anyone confirm whether or not there is any possible performance decrease from doing so? If not then I may as well enable it on mine.

There will be a performances impact with FileVault enabled compared to it disablesd as there is a cost to encrypting/decrypting.

However, on my 2014 Mac Mini and late 2018 MBP I can’t say I have seen any noticeable impact.

 

[Broken Hope]

My new Mac mini has a T2 chip so the drive is encrypted even if you don't have FileVault enabled, so I enabled it and it was instant to enable as the drive was already encrypted..

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT208344

 

[Phemo]

Just switched it on myself on my 2018 MBP and it indeed just enabled immediately, that's good because I expected a bit of a wait there.

 

[Spleen Sauce]

Same here after reading the above comments - enabled instantly. Wondered why it warned me about backing up to a non-encrypted time machine location...

 

[Scythe]

I always feared the performance impact but had never thought about the T2 chip on my 2018 MBP. As it’s already encrypted I may as well switch FileVault on now for a little more protection with no cost.

 

[JamesM]

Base spec 2016 Macbook Pro with it on, seems pretty snappy still to me.

 

[Feek]

I didn’t know the T2 gave some level of encryption, that’s quite clever. Not quite FileVault level but a decent start.