Photos library on external drive + encryption?

[epicwool]

Background:​

I recently bought my first ever mac, Mac mini m1, because I have been using iPhone for many years and wanted the smooth integration with photos.

Since my photo library will not fit on the internal disk, I bought an external ssd to where I have moved my photo library.
This seems to work as expected, however if I am not mistaken the T2 chip will not encrypt the data on the external ssd. So if the external ssd was stolen, it would be trivial to see all my photos.

I did experiment with Disk utility and enabling encryption on the drive. That causes a pop-up window asking for the password to appear when the computer is rebooted. After a system update, the computer rebooted and it took a few hours before I noticed this and entered the password. Afterwards Photos could no longer load that photo library, the error message (I cannot remember it exactly) was very generic and the error code did not provide much more detail. The library was corrupted somehow.

My question:​

There must be plenty of people with large photo libraries that are required to save the photo library on an external drive. Do you encrypt your drives? Are there any best-practices in this specific case?

 

[cbdilger]

Without an exact error message, I'm afraid helping you will be difficult, if not impossible.

I have used encrypted external drives for years and have never had a problem with data corruption. Failures, sure, but I just restore a backup and move on.

You do have a backup of that external drive, right?

 

[epicwool]

The corruption happened while I was setting up my mac, so I could just restore from iCloud no problem.

Have you also used encrypted external drives to where you store your photos library? I believe bad things happened somehow because if photos tries to sync from icloud when it cannot read the photos library, it will revert back to the default location.

 

[cbdilger]

Yes, I have Photos libraries on external drives (and before that iPhoto). iMovie libraries, too.

You didn't say anything about iCloud or iCloud Photos synching before. No experience to share there, sorry.

 

[chabig]

I too, keep a large photo library on an encrypted external hard drive. The drive is formatted as APFS and I have never had a problem with it. iCloud syncs my photos to this library in full resolution and I back up this drive to another regularly.

 

[MacCheetah3]

I did experiment with Disk utility and enabling encryption on the drive. That causes a pop-up window asking for the password to appear when the computer is rebooted. After a system update, the computer rebooted and it took a few hours before I noticed this and entered the password.

Next time, when entering the drive password, tick the checkbox for “Remember this password in my keychain.” That way, at least, on reboots, etc, the drive will auto-mount and background tasks shouldn’t have problems.

Related:

Protect your Mac information with encryption

On your Mac, you can encrypt information on removable media such as CDs, DVDs, and memory cards and require a password to decode it.

support.apple.com

Keychain Access User Guide for Mac

You can use Keychain Access on your Mac to keep track of keys, certificates, and other sensitive information in a keychain.

support.apple.com

 

[Fishrrman]

If it was me, I WOULD NOT ENCRYPT a drive with just photos on it (shouting intentional).

Reason why:
How valuable are those pics to you?
If something went wrong -- perhaps a glitch in encryption (or even trouble with a password) -- what if you can't "get to" the pics any more?
Try to "recover" files from an encrypted drive -- well, it can be all-but impossible.

Actually, you need at least TWO external drives:
- First as a primary storage drive
- Second as a "backup" to the primary drive.

One drive alone, isn't enough.
Drives can fail.
Have been there myself, and learned "the hard way".

I can understand why for some folks encryption may be necessary.
But on a drive for just photos -- no.

 

[epicwool]

I too, keep a large photo library on an encrypted external hard drive. The drive is formatted as APFS and I have never had a problem with it. iCloud syncs my photos to this library in full resolution and I back up this drive to another regularly.

Did you encrypt your drive through disk utility? Does it mean you enter a password upon reboot?

If it was me, I WOULD NOT ENCRYPT a drive with just photos on it (shouting intentional).

Reason why:
How valuable are those pics to you?
If something went wrong -- perhaps a glitch in encryption (or even trouble with a password) -- what if you can't "get to" the pics any more?
Try to "recover" files from an encrypted drive -- well, it can be all-but impossible.

Actually, you need at least TWO external drives:
- First as a primary storage drive
- Second as a "backup" to the primary drive.

One drive alone, isn't enough.
Drives can fail.
Have been there myself, and learned "the hard way".

I can understand why for some folks encryption may be necessary.
But on a drive for just photos -- no.

I agree with you that the photos are among the most sensitive data i store. For that same reason, it is also the data I would dread the most if it was stolen. Now I am neither someone famous or someone who has spicy pictures in their library, but I would feel really uneasy knowing that my hard drive was stolen and unencrypted for anyone to browse through. The rest that you mention regarding backups, 100% agree, they are required!

 

[epicwool]

Next time, when entering the drive password, tick the checkbox for “Remember this password in my keychain.” That way, at least, on reboots, etc, the drive will auto-mount and background tasks shouldn’t have problems.

Related:

Protect your Mac information with encryption

On your Mac, you can encrypt information on removable media such as CDs, DVDs, and memory cards and require a password to decode it.

support.apple.com

Keychain Access User Guide for Mac

You can use Keychain Access on your Mac to keep track of keys, certificates, and other sensitive information in a keychain.

support.apple.com

Interesting! Will definitely give that a try!