Louwrentius

Read the comments as they may provide useful information for your particular situation

I boot my iMac from an external FW800 SSD. I found out that it is impossible to encrypt this disk using the new FileVault as part of Lion.

Furthermore, I also found out that if you have a disk with a Bootcamp partition FileVault will also refuse to start the encryption process. I'm not trying to encrypt the Bootcamp volume, just the bootable Mac OS X Lion installation.

It may be advised to stay away from Lion if you need a setup similar to this one and also need disk encryption.

My 1 TB hard drive of my 2011 27" iMac was partitioned with:

1. A bootable partition with Mac OS X Lion
2. Time machine partition (I use an external SSD as my main OS)
3. Bootcamp partition with windows
4. A data partition containg... data.

The problem is that CoreStorage is too new. Disk Utility in Lion cannot cope with CoreStorage volumes. So when I decided to encrypt the bootable partition using the new Full Disk Encryption based on filevault, I could no longer manage my other partitions.

Furthermore, bootcamp got killed since it needs to be installed on one of the first three partitions on the disk. Due to the whole CoreStorage stuff and filevault, it became the fifth partition and it got killed. I couldn't get it back to life It wouldn't boot.

What I want now is to create a setup where I have three partitions:

1. A bootable (Boot) clone of my external FW800 SSD boot disk using SuperDuper
2. A Bootcamp volume running Windows (for games)
3. A data partition storing well.. data.

I want to encrypt the boot disk and the data partition. If this is going to work, I don't know.

It may be advised to stay away from Lion if you need a setup similar to this one and also need disk encryption.

I'm a strong advocate of killing the optical drive. As of 2011, there is no need for it anymore. Laptops could get lighter, smaller or have more room for additional battery capacity if the optical drive would no longer be present.

In my life, I never see people use the optical drive. And why would you use them any more? Isn't it so that if you are still using CDs or DVDs with your computer, that you do it out of (a bad) habit? And if you really can't part with your CDs or DVDs, would an external USB optical drive be a usable solution?

I think that we are at a point where most people don't even know that their computer has an optical drive.

With the release of the new 2011 Mac Mini, Apple dropped the optical drive yet again. They first dropped it from the MacBook Air and now the Mini.

What is next? Well that is clear. New Macs will be able to boot over the Internet from Apple's servers. Again, no need for an optical drive, even for reinstalling your computer. I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation of MacBook Pro laptops would not contain an optical drive. Maybe some people aren't ready for it but people should rejoice since it would make MacBooks thinner and lighter.

As apple killed the floppy drive, it is now killing the optical drive.