I have a folder containing files including Wills, Trusts, personal financial statements etc. Most of these files are word docs, excel spreadsheets, PDF's and jpegs. I would like to protect this folder from prying eyes.
If this info was housed in a .dmg, it would seem pretty straightforward to click on the .dmg, enter my password, mount the drive, access the information/folder and when finished, eject the disk image knowing it is closed and protected.
Am I missing something? Any pros/cons of this idea?
Best Answer
Your use case is exactly why encrypted DMG were created. The external file name can be different than the actual name of the filesystem can be obfuscated while the drive is not mounted.
The only con (which kind of is a Pro) is that spotlight can't search within an unmounted image and you may want to disable spotlight entirely on that volume just in case you don't want any extra caches / extra access that isn't necessary.
Alternatives to this is storing text in a keychain secure note, especially if you keep alternate keychains for more secure information. I also find myself storing more things in 1Password when I don't need a self-contained archive for things like certain client data or certain data I wish to be doubly encrypted. (I use FileVault on most Mac these days so that everything is encrypted at least once.)