FileVault Recovery Key Location

Lincoln QandR wrote:

I would still feel more comfortable though understanding what's going on with this Recovery Key for FileVault. If I was seeing "Your iCloud account can be used to unlock the disk”, that I have been told is what I would see if the Recovery info was being held in my Apple Account, I would be happy with that. At the moment though I am just seeing 'A recovery key has been set' which from online research says there will be a 24 character key. (I am massively detailed and I would have got this saved if I had been given it).

How risky / robust is the process of turning FileVault Off and back On Again, so decrypting and recrypting my disk, to force it to give me the Key, or allow be to confirm that the recovery info is stored in my Apple Account?

I was in the same situation with my M4 Pro MBP that I upgraded to Tahoe. I turned FV off then back on, and was presented with the Recovery Key which I copied and have stored securely.

The process was painless and basically immediate, since M-series Macs use Secure Enclave and the internal storage is already encrypted. FileVault just incorporates the login password into the cryptographic key.

How risky / robust is the process of turning FileVault Off and back On Again, so decrypting and recrypting my disk, to force it to give me the Key, or allow be to confirm that the recovery info is stored in my Apple Account?

Not risky at all, provided you keep in mind the basic premise that any device can fail at any time. As such, you would not be adding to risks that are not already present. It also happens to be only way to do it, if you are the least bit uncertain about the presence or absence of any FV Recovery Key.

Protect data on your Mac with FileVault - Apple Support describes the two mutually exclusive ways of unlocking a FV encrypted disk. One would think the iCloud choice ought to be the most popular, because you can unlock the disk with your Apple Account. For those who choose not to use iCloud for whatever reasons — concerns about a data breach, or some inability to reach Apple's iCloud servers, for example — might want to accept responsibility for storing it in some other manner, presumably one under their sole control. Lose that key and the only recourse is to erase the disk, hence the value of keeping backups they way you do.

So, no added risk.

The fdesetup Terminal command does not know about iCloud.

FileVault recovery key - Apple Support

FileVault recovery options - Apple Support

There is absolutely no reason for concern if you maintain Time Machine backups (plural). Conversely stated, if you do not maintain backups, then by definition you have absolutely no concern about retaining the information on that Mac, and understand that it may become irretrievably lost at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all. Hopefully that is stating the obvious.

Don't use Google. More stating the obvious.