2019 MacBook Pro - Filevault 2 on or off?

Hi all,

I recently purchased a 2019 15" MacBook Pro with a 512GB SSD, 8 core i9 processor & 16gb RAM. I plan to do some recording with it, initially I'll be doing some recordings of my band. If I've got the template set up correctly it will be 25 tracks, all raw digital audio from out Midas M32 monitor console (pre all adjustments), no VMs or effects. I'm recording to a Samsung T1 1TB external drive via USB-C.

 

I've done some optimizations such as removing all unused networking adapters, turning off auto sleep, firewall, etc.

 

I've never used Filevault before on my Macs but since this one will be used mobile I turned it on upon initial setup of this MacBook.

 

Given that this is a fairly beefy processor and that I'm recording to an external SSD my assumption is that leaving Filevault 2 on won't cause me any problems, but I'm not really an expert so I wanted to ask here as a lot of you are FAR more expert than I.

 

Any info on additional optimizations, also, would be vastly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your help!!!!

You DON"T wanna use Filevault with Logic or any music or video app. Period.

No? If I may ask, what negative effects will I see? As I understand it, the T2 processor handles the enc/dec duties, freeing the i9 to do whatever else it is tasked with. Not trying to be adversarial, I just wanna understand this completely. Thanks!

you can simply turn it off again, if you think it’s a problem.

And also, unless you have a real performance problem, stop doing any “optimizations”, you may break something without improving anything.

Anything with a T2 is already doing the encrypt/decrypt by default - its actually permanently on. The Filevault setting just turns on the password requirement. Its different from the pre-T2 machines where the encrypt/decrypt was actually on or off depending on the Filevault setting. So basically, there's no difference speed-wise - its just a matter of whether you want the extra security of requiring a password.