FileVault

FileVault is a disk encryption program in Mac OS X 10.3 and later. It performs on-the-fly encryption with volumes on Mac computers. FileVault was introduced with Mac OS X Panther (10.3), and could only be applied to a user's home directory, not the startup volume. The operating system uses an encrypted sparse disk image (a large single file) to present a volume for the home directory. Mac OS X Leopard and Mac OS X Snow Leopard use more modern sparse bundle disk images which spread the data over 8 MB files (called bands) within a bundle. Apple refers to this original iteration of FileVault as legacy FileVault. Mac OS X Lion and newer offer FileVault 2, which is a significant redesign. This encrypts the entire OS X startup volume and typically includes the home directory, abandoning the disk image approach. For this approach to disk encryption, authorised users' information is loaded from a separate non-encrypted boot volume (partition/slice type Apple_Boot).