How to create an encrypted disk image to store your private files
January 26, 2009 by Ross McKillop
This tutorial will guide you through using SecureFiles to create a secure, encrypted disk image in OS X. Using that disk image, you can store files that you don’t want other people to be able to access.
There are quite a few ways to create secure disk images in OS X, or a secure partition. However, using SecureFiles is arguably the easiest way.
- To get started, download SecureFiles and open the .dmg file. Drag the SecureFiles app to your Applications folder to install it.
- Launch SecureFiles from your Applications folder.
- Give your secure disk image a name by entering it in the New disk image name: field. Decide how large you want the image to be by selecting a size from the Size: stretches to drop-down menu. You can create custom size disk images (rather than using one of the defaults) by selecting the Preferences option from the top menu. Now, decide if you want to allow Spotlight to index your secure image. I opted not to, but this is one of those “up to you” decisions. Click the small “folder” icon in the bottom left corner of the SecureFiles window to change the default location your image will be saved in, if you don’t like the default. Finally, click the Create button.
- Now enter a password for your secure disk image. As the window indicates, if you lose this password you won’t be able to access your secure files. So select a password that’s both secure (hard to guess) and easy to remember. You’ll probably want to remove the check from the box labeled Remember password in my keychain, otherwise you won’t be prompted to enter your password each time you open the image to add or access files to/from it, which (with the default keychain settings) negates the entire SecureFiles process.
- And now your disk image will be created.
- Once completed, your disk image will be mounted, and you can access it via the Finder. Drag and drop files to it the same way you would any other. Once inside, they’re part of the encrypted disk image. Unmount the disk image when you’re done.
- Any time in the future when you want to access the secure disk image - to view/extract or add files to it, just locate the .sparseimage file (it will be saved in the location you specified back in step #3) and double-click it.
- Enter the password you created in step #4.
- And your encrypted/secure disk image will mount. Again, now you can access the files inside, or add more to it.
Thanks for the information. Just in case you didn’t already know, you can also do this with Disk Utility, which is already installed in your Utilities folder. The procedure is almost identical.
The 2 benefits of Disk Utility are… nothing new to install, and it has stronger encryption.
[...] Spotlight to index the files (they will only show up if the image is mounted). As noted in the Switching to Mac tutorial, you probably will want to uncheck the box for remembering the password since that would make [...]
[...] Spotlight to index the files (they will only show up if the image is mounted). As noted in the Switching to Mac tutorial, you probably will want to uncheck the box for remembering the password since that would make [...]
[...] Via Switching to Mac [...]
@paul -
I should have mentioned it in the tutorial - the disk image created by SecureFiles is compressed, it ‘grows’ as you need it. I’m fairly sure (though am often wrong) that the disk image created by Disk Utility starts out right away as the size you specified, rather than growing “as needed”.
[...] Fuente: http://www.switchingtomac.com/ [...]
Nice tutorial! Very handy.
@Ross - I’m reasonably confident that Disk Utility can, in fact, create sparse images.
1. Open DU
2. Hit “New Image”
3. Set image format to “sparse disk image”
In fact, I would not be terribly surprised to find that SecureFiles is just a frontend to the same underlying command line tools Disk Utility uses (diskutil and hdiutil).
Kevin (and all) -
Yes, you’re absolutely right. This really does appear to be a front-end for Disk Utility/diskutil and hdiutil. The sparse disk image mode wasn’t something I was aware of. So at this point they only advantage I can see for using this app is that it’s somewhat more user friendly than Disk Utility. If you’re willing to spare the hard drive space, it does make things slightly easier. If you’re not, there doesn’t appear to be anything that this app can do that Disk Utility can’t.
…or you could make the folder a hidden folder. Much easier. Much faster.
@Rob - easier and faster absolutely yes. Much, much less secure though.