Path: csiph.com!news.swapon.de!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!mx02.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: John Somerset Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system Subject: Re: El Capitan oddities Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2015 22:59:43 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 58 Message-ID: References: <1mc1073.1tjqeu81n66be1N%dempson@actrix.gen.nz> <4eydnb65Up8_ZYrLnZ2dnUU7-RmdnZ2d@giganews.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2015 02:57:40 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx02.eternal-september.org; posting-host="a1d19e40b7214cf1e9d7a49bb5e111a0"; logging-data="24826"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+ocja+XkDcg9+uy3h/V/Zl" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.11; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.3.0 In-Reply-To: <4eydnb65Up8_ZYrLnZ2dnUU7-RmdnZ2d@giganews.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:B+sO3zMZ3nX/ec20EvZFxAJFdQE= Xref: csiph.com comp.sys.mac.system:82899 On 10/9/15 1:25 PM, Alan Browne wrote: > On 2015-10-09 12:38, John Somerset wrote: >> On 10/9/15 9:38 AM, Alan Browne wrote: >>> On 2015-10-08 22:08, John Somerset wrote: >>> >>>> That's it. I've never taken the plunge to automatic backups. >>> >>> Trivially easy. And once set up and running, all but noticeable in >>> operation, esp. with high speed interfaces (Firewire or faster). >> >> It's a carryover from System 7. A power interruption could make a disk >> unreadable, IIRC. I kept my backup drive turned off normally so a power >> problem wouldn't corrupt it along with my internal disk. Maybe >> journaling has made the risk negligible. > > Many things make it negligible. I've had power failures during writes > and no issues afterwards other than files that needed to be copied again. > > You can also get a UPS to keep your disks up during writes - further, > they have power failure management s/w to terminate tasks on the mac > during power failures that last more than x minutes. (Although I don't > know how gracefully TM exits if writing at that time. OTOH, once a TM > volume is initialized, hourly updates take little time). > A few months ago, the household lights blinked, but my Mini and LED-backlight monitor kept going. I was impressed. If my Mini had been powering a USB drive, maybe it wouldn't have kept running. I guess corrupting a backup disk would probably be an inconvenience, not a disaster. > >>> >>>> >>>> I'm scared of the trouble I might get into if I encrypted my disk. >>> >>> Trivially low risk and removes any "end of disk life" issues wrt >>> destroying data. Just make a copy of the recovery key and keep in a >>> safe place. >>> >> How does encryption prevent loss of data? >> >> Is the recovery key normally a password created by the user? > > No. It's gen'd by FileVault. 24 chars (similar to a s/w license key). > > Note that you would normally keep the Filevault key in your keychain > which requires password access. eg: when you log in to your mac, the HD > Filevault key is retrieved via keychain. > > I've found a page on Filevault. http://osxdaily.com/2013/05/22/filevault-disk-encryption-mac/ I was worried about what a power interruption could do. It says I'd have to restart the computer. If the disk needed repair, I wonder if that would be a problem with Filevault. It says with a 5400 rpm drive, I might see slower performance. I guess I'd have to try it to find out.