virtualbox.org

Is anyone aware of any issues associated with using VB on an encrypted hard drive on a Mac?
Right now, I'm using VB on unencrypted hard drives, and am considering encrypting the Mac-Air and maybe the iMac. Both use Mac OS X 9.3.

There may be a performance hit while multi-GB .vdi files are decrypted. Other than that I wouldn't think so.

Does your answer mean that the VB stuff is decrypted everytime it's used?

When otherwise would the decryption happen??

I do it on Windows 7 using TrueCrypt and YES there is a performance hit but it's not that bad. I have 30 GB VDI OS drives.

And the encryption software is working in the background whenever ANY file on the encrypted container / partition is used. So for a VM on an encrypted drive that means constantly.

If You are using File Vault 2 no. You have acess to encrypted files when you log in. Of course if you leave your Mac on and logged in then encryption doesn't really help. If you are using third party encryption then it would depend on the particular app. You can just encrypt certain files and/or folders using Disk Utility.

edit: It can take several hours to encrypt a disk btw.