Alternative to FileVault

Question

Hi all,
after I had tried Apples FileVault and had a bunch of problems I keep it deactivated. Though I'd like to protect my most important data, like personal data, mails, adressbook and calendar data.
What can be done to protect this data?
For the personal data I have created an encrypted disk image which I unlock when I start working. I thought about trying the same for the others, so I tried to create a symbolic link named like the origial folder and the same place (e.g. Mail in ~/Library/). But it doesn't work as the application won't find it's folder.
Any suggestions?
Cheers
M.

Answer 1

Well, Marc, I'm not sure which steps you took to setup your configuration but the command you used to create the link seems ok to me... Anyway, I tried to do the same thing right now and it worked fine for me. I'm going to describe exactly what I did.
1. Using the Finder, I navigated to my Library folder and Duplicated the Mail folder (this command created the "Mail copy" folder;
2. I renamed this new folder; Named it "MailCopy";
3. Deleted the Mail folder;
4. Using Disk Utility, I created an encrypted 500MB (128bit AES) image and saved it as /Users/miguel/Mail.dmg;
5. This image was automatically mounted at /Volumes/Mail (but you can mount it manually);
6. I started the Terminal application and executed "cp -R /Users/miguel/Library/MailCopy/ /Volumes/Mail/";
7. Soft linked this folder: ln -s /Volumes/Mail/ /Users/miguel/Library/Mail;
8. Finally, I started Mail.app and it worked ok
I'm not sure if you missed any of these steps in your setup but, well, you can take another shot and see if it works now...
Just a final note: beware that there are other folder besides ~/Library/Mail that need to be protected, e.g. ~/Library/Mail Downloads...
And that's it : )
Cheers!
-- Miguel