[G4] Encrypted Hard Disk

[sr ferenczy]

Precisely the reasoning behind my post Alex, your rather blunt post that
"it's probably not a good idea to use it"
was a bit misleading, when in fact very few people have had reported 
trouble with file vault after the updates-though i readily admit there 
were quite serious problems with the 1st version. to this date, the 
only long lasting "problem" remains speed, and this is simply a fixture 
of on-the-fly encryption of data.

Just trying to shed the light of  first hand experience onto the shadow 
of anecdotal "evidence"

sandor

On Apr 22, 2004, at 2:25 PM, Alex wrote:

>
> On Thursday, Apr 22, 2004, at 12:17 Canada/Eastern, sr ferenczy wrote:
>
>> I have been using File vault on my laptop since the first update 
>> (original version hosed too many people's systems) and havent had a 
>> single problem.[...]
>
> Whenever someone says, "There's a problem with such-and-such piece of 
> software", invariably there is someone else who says, "But it works 
> fine on my machine!"
>
> Usually, it's a misunderstanding. (I think we've already discussed 
> some time ago in a thread on disk utilities.)
>
> No reputable company like Apple is going to release a piece of 
> software without testing it. But these days it is hardly possible (and 
> certainly not economically feasible) to test it against all soft/hard 
> combinations out there. It follows that, on average, only a very small 
> number of users will experience a problem with a particular product; 
> say, well below 1%. Something that affects a great number of users is 
> quite rare (e.g., the Intel bad math chip). But it also follows that, 
> for various reasons, products do sometimes get released which cause 
> problems to a larger than usual number of users.
>
> Certain problems with File Vault have been reported widely. Does that 
> mean _all_ users are affected? Absolutely not -- that would be a huge 
> story (for us). Does it mean a majority of users are affected? Again, 
> no -- that would be a major story. What it means is that a minority of 
> keener-than-average users have come across it, perhaps 20% or only 10% 
> of the base. But the issue is, when you are handling important files 
> (otherwise why encrypt them?) do you want to take the risk of being in 
> the 20% or 10% who did have problems, or would you rather use a method 
> which has a risk factor well below 1%?
>
> It is said that we learn from our own mistakes; the wise among us also 
> learn from the mistakes of others.
>
> f
>
>