Mac – With File Vault ON are time machine backups encrypted

backupencryptionfilevaulttime-machine

I have been using time machine to back up to a wireless external drive since I got my mac. Today I used filevault to encrypt my hard drive.

  • Will this affect how Time Machine backs up my files?
  • Will the new backups be encrypted on the external drive?

I am running Lion on the mac.

I found this on an apple support page – http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/21241.html

'If you must back up to a network or external disk that’s not under your control, you can turn on FileVault to encrypt data stored in your home directory. This data will also be encrypted in the backup. However, Time Machine will perform backups only when you are logged out of your user account.'

How can I check to see if the Time Machine backups are actually encrypted?

Best Answer

No, the backups will not be encrypted automatically, but it's very easy to enable for directly attached disks. Just check "Encrypt Backup Disk" in the Time Machine disk selection settings.

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If you're backing up to another Mac, you can use Disk Utility on that Mac to erase non-boot drives and put an encrypted partition on them:

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