So I was trying to secure my computer a couple of days ago, and thought I’d enable FileVault as an easy way to encrypt my important files. However, when I tried to do so, I received the following message:
You cannot turn on FileVault to protect the home folder of this user account. The home folder is located on a volume that is not a Mac OS Extended format volume.
How odd. I haven’t done anything weird; the filesystem that my home directory resides on is definitely a Mac OS Extended one. It turns out that actually FileVault refuses to work on case-sensitive Mac OS Extended filesystems. Which is not at all obvious from the error message.
It all seems rather arbitrary, given that Disk Utility will happily create encrypted case-sensitive sparse bundle disk images.