Thursday, January 13, 2011

Encrypt Data on Mac

Everyone stores some sort of personal data on their computer, stuff they don't want others to see. Because of this, I decided to see how to encrypt data on my Mac. Sure, it may come with FileVault built in, but FileVault is a bit clunky to use. So how else can we encrypt data? Well, we can use Disk Utility. Here is what to do:

  • Open up Disk Utility (Applications--->Utilities---> Disk Utility)
  • Click "File"--->"New"---> "Blank Disk Image"
  • You will get a window that looks like this:

  • Give the to be disk a name, size and where you would like to save it to. 
  • Choose an Encryption type, 128 bit is fine.
  • Make sure it is set to "read/write disk image"
  • Click "Create".
  • You will be asked for a password, I suggest letting the computer generate one for you as it is safer then creating one for yourself.
Once the image has been created, it will be located wherever you told it to save to. You can mount the image any time you wish, and you will be asked for the password every time. Once mounted, you can add files to the image, then unmounted and they will be encrypted. Just make sure to unmount it so others don't look!

~Dave

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