How does filevault 2 work

When the system boots, it accesses the recovery drive and loads the login screen to present to you. When you then supply your password it unlocks the boot drive and continues to load the OS and your user account before dropping you to your desktop. As a result of this, the preboot login screen may show much quicker on systems with FileVault 2 enabled than on those that do not.

This doesn't exactly tell and the exact details are probably not out there , but it could be as I originally said. What I described would be more secure than just storing the master key in plaintext. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. How does FileVault 2 work with multiple decryption keys? Ask Question. Asked 9 years, 9 months ago.

Active 9 years, 9 months ago. Viewed times. With FileVault 2, you can encrypt the hard-drive such that users on the computer can decrypt it with either of their passwords How does this work? Improve this question. FileVault 2 offers full-disk encryption FDE. When enabled, the entire contents of the startup drive are encrypted. You can enable FileVault 2 with an existing Mac, but starting with Relatively few people engage in criminal activities, and of them, even fewer ever have their computers seized and examined.

FileVault 2 takes advantage of the ever-improving processor speed and features in Macs to perform on-the-fly encryption and decryption. Every chunk of data read from and written to disk, whether of the spinning variety or SSD, has to go through this process.

Macs introduced starting in and , and every model since, can use encryption circuitry in the processor, boosting performance. On a system without FileVault 2 already in place, you need to turn it on, which converts your startup drive from its unencrypted state to fully encrypted. This comes with a few big flashing red warnings and pieces of advice before you proceed. Warning 1! Choose how you want to be able to unlock your disk and reset your password, in case you ever forget your password :.

If you lose both your account password and your FileVault recovery key, you won't be able to log in to your Mac or access the data on your startup disk. Encryption occurs in the background as you use your Mac, and only while your Mac is awake and plugged in to AC power. Any new files that you create are automatically encrypted as they are saved to your startup disk.

When FileVault setup is complete and you restart your Mac, you will use your account password to unlock your disk and allow your Mac to finish starting up. FileVault requires that you log in every time your Mac starts up, and no account is permitted to log in automatically. If you forget your account password or it doesn't work, you might be able to reset your password.

You can then turn it on again to generate a new key and disable all older keys. Decryption occurs in the background as you use your Mac, and only while your Mac is awake and plugged in to AC power.

Not all languages and regions are serviced by AppleCare or iCloud, and not all AppleCare-serviced regions offer support in every language. If you set up your Mac for a language that AppleCare doesn't support, then turn on FileVault and store your key with Apple OS X Mavericks only , your security questions and answers could be in a language that AppleCare doesn't support.