I have been inquiring since last July about the ability to encrypt an external WD 3TB My Book Essential HD. This was a new feature in Lion using Disk Utility (different than File Vault 2 configured via System Preferences for the interal HD). I have been told by Support that this is coming, but it has been months now. Where does this stand?
Before you tell me to use the hardware based encryption in the drive itself, be aware that the WD drive locking feature is NOT compatible with Time Machine and I have also reported this previously.
I have been inquiring since last July about the ability to encrypt an external WD 3TB My Book Essential HD. This was a new feature in Lion using Disk Utility (different than File Vault 2 configured via System Preferences for the interal HD). I have been told by Support that this is coming, but it has been months now. Where does this stand?
This is a feature on Lion if is not available then not much can be done
Before you tell me to use the hardware based encryption in the drive itself, be aware that the WD drive locking feature is NOT compatible with Time Machine and I have also reported this previously.
The Smartware IS compatible with TM … the only thing that you need to make sure is that drive is unlocked at the time of the scheduled backup.
You can also use any other software to encrypt the drive
You may alreayd be aware, but the latest OS X Lion update (10.7.3) recitfied this known issue. FileVault2 can now successfully format and encrypt these drives.
You may alreayd be aware, but the latest OS X Lion update (10.7.3) recitfied this known issue. FileVault2 can now successfully format and encrypt these drives.
Actually, I was not, nor did I see anything obvious in the description of the update, which I had installed previously.
Thanks for the heads up on this. In light of the comments over the prior months from WDC’s own support folks that this was a firmware issue, I was not looking to Apple for OS updates to resolve this.
Wizer, just following your answer - I may have the same issue.
When you say “The Smartware IS compatible with TM … the only thing that you need to make sure is that drive is unlocked at the time of the scheduled backup.” I’m confused (and I’m new so please excuss me): My understanding is that TM is automatic (every hour) - does that mean I need to Unlock the drive each time I mount it (attach it) to my Mac?
Thanks for the answer - I guess in that case it doesn’t really make sense to use the hardware encryption, does it?
Also, it doesn’t seem to take much time to envoke the ecryption - is it encrypting the data itself, or just the HD driver, i.e. access to the unencrypted data?
That depends on what you want the drive for… the encryption comes handy when multiple people have access to the drive> The data will not be accessible unless you unlock the drive.> it has password protection and hardware base encryption.
