How to use OS X FileVault to encrypt external data

Those that use OS X might be aware of FileVault. This post assumes you have already set up FileVault or have some knowledge of its capabilities – so for those of you who haven’t done this yet you might want to do it right now. Mac OS X Lion now allows you to encrypt (it uses XTS-AES 128 encryption) an entire volume instead of just your home folder.

The real improvement for me is that FileVault 2 (the Lion only version number) more importantly, now allows you to encrypt external disks, USB flash drives and memory cards which is the purpose of this post. As with TimeMachine, to be able to use FileVault 2 to encrypt your external data, you will first be asked to format the target drive, so if you have any legacy data, now might be a good time to port that data to another backup device. The following steps will show you how to create and mount an encrypted volume on an external disk: Read more...