Versions are stored on the same physical / logical volume as the original.
This Q&A has all the technical details, but in short, look in the root user owned folder /.DocumentRevisions-V100
on each volume. If you create a disk image, the user that mounts the disk image normally owns the /Volumes/whatever/.DocumentRevisions-V100
directory where changes to documents on that volume are stored.
So - if that volume is FileVault encrypted (or a secure disk image) then the version is as secure as the original.
When you copy a file by attaching it, you only send the current saved copy - not any previous versions - so then again - it's only as secure (or not) as the medium into which you send that file.
So - versions doesn't do any additional encryption and it's really up to each application to decide whether it enables or disables versions and whether the data it writes is also obfuscated / encrypted - but the presence of versions neither adds nor subtracts security to a system.
I'm also having this problem. I've seen a few users comment on it on different forums and Apple's Support. No one has offered a real answer, other than this seems to be a problem with Apple's implementation of SMB or the way the Finder interacts and reads those Volumes (or the way attribute files are saved/stored/read on them).
The format of the servers volume doesn't really matter and should be transparent to the client. All Finder can see is a SMB share, whether that share is on an ext3 filesystem or a NTFS one is quite irrelevant.
I've tested connecting to the same volume with AFP, SMB (which in Mavericks now uses SMB2 by default) and CIFS (forcing Finder to use the SMB v1 protocol). As far as I know, tags info are stored in .DS_Store files for each folder.
Connecting with CIFS or SMB, tag support is buggy. Tags sometimes appear for a few seconds and then disappear. In addition to the .DS_Store file, a ._FILE_NAME file is created for each file. Getting the properties of the file sometimes shows the tag.
Connecting with AFP tags work as expected. Just a .DS_Store file is created. But no tag info is available if tag was assigned while mounted as SMB.
Is a pity, because SMB2 is faster than AFP in my tests, but sacrificing tags for it is too bad.
Best Answer
From Finder, highlight a file and hit Cmd-I (or right click and select Get Info) to bring up the File Info Dialog for the file. In this dialog, the Spotlight Comments field is where you add tag data. Just add text to this field to "tag" the file.
Here's a good article on how to become a meta-data wizard in OS X:
https://gigaom.com/2007/02/01/using-metadata-effectively-in-os-x/
If was tagging that screen capture, I might use the following in the comments box:
So that I could find that screen shot by the customer, or by the fact that it's being used in a presentation, or by the name of the product I'm showing them.
Yes, they're stored in the
.DS_Store
files you see in each folder. These files are read by Finder. The information is also stored in Extended Attributes (EAs) on the files themselves. Spotlight will prefer to read the data from EAs. EAs are a feature of the HFS+ filesystem, so remote filesystems might not necessarily have EAs available on files. In these cases,.DS_Store
files are the fallback. Spotlight would also have a tag <-> file mapping section in its database but that's only accessible to Spotlight.Generally: yes. You can add tags to files and folders on removable drives and remote shares. Unless you've turned off
.DS_Store
creation on remote shares, OS X will just add these files and keep the meta-data there for you.Yes, see above. If you didn't want OS X to do this, run:
defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true
And then restart Finder.
Lots!
Here's a list of 7 file-tagging applications for OS X: http://mac.appstorm.net/roundups/utilities-roundups/7-file-tagging-applications-for-os-x/
I personally love and use LaunchBar which is like Spotlight on steroids.