You could use the command line interface to convert any qualified drive, but I won't provide details here (mostly because I don't know them). Simply put, it adds encryption between the hardware and the filesystem, so the filesystem itself is unmodified, just filtered thru encryption. The encryption layer, which is used by FileVault2, is implemented with Lion's new Core Storage, which is a Logical Volume system to you Linux types. All old drives won't show up since they don't use it. Some nitty gritty details for the really geeky, you can see details at the command line using 'diskutil coreStorage list'. When I rebooted the machine for another purpose, it did ask for the password when I logged in, and if i wanted to store it on my keychain. My 1TB drive just finished "converting" (encrypting) the drive (~24 hours). Yes, this does require a physical connection to the device, so network disks won't work.
Just to be safe, have another good backup on another disk. It is taking a while too, so it might encrypt the whole file system, which will block recovery from anything older than Lion. When I enabled it, it did a long 'preparing for encryption' step (probably a check disk), a quick backup, and now its sitting there encrypting. I'd speculate it uses the same method as FileVault2, but I don't know. Requirements for encryption are just Mac Extended (Journaled) file system on a GPT-partitioned disk. You probably won't need it ever again unless you recover the backup from a different machine, so remembering it would be tricky. Give it a good password, and never lose it. Check the checkbox in this dialog to Encrypt backup disk. and select the disk you're currently using for backup.
MAC OS EXTENDED JOURNALED ENCRYPTED TIME MACHINE HOW TO
Time Machine finally supports encryption here's how to activate it.Īt the Time Machine preference pane, go to Select Disk.