hi P. :)
thank you so much for your help!
Well, I have no experience with "booting" a computer from an external Bootable Drive--is that something just anyone off the street with computer-savvy could do to someone else's computer?
Or, would they need to gain access to a Bootable Drive that i created specifically to "boot" my own computer?
When you say "boot", do you mean not only turn on, but also log in to a computer?
I always keep a good password on my macbook, and i have it set so that whenever i shut the lid it enters sleep (therefore it is still powered on), and then if you open the lid it requires you to enter my password before it will let you proceed.
So if some dishonest computer-savvy person were to, say, steal my laptop out of my luggage when i was traveling, would they be able to use their own Bootable Drive to "boot" my laptop, and automatically be signed in as me too, and thereby have access to my files and information?
I guess something i don't yet understand is the nature of the booting process. I had thought that perhaps "booting a computer from an external Bootable Drive" meant taking a computer that has failed to start up on its own and feeding it the necessary info from an external device to get it to start up...
Or else, to get the computer to start up a whole different operating system than the one normally used...
and that there's like a partition separating each operating system on a computer...
if so, would such partitions be vulnerable to penetration? (I guess somehow i thought they'd be like firewalls)...
Is this all correct? If not, would you please explain how it really goes? (to an un-savvy user)
Also, if turning on File Vault protects the computer owner's info so much more, why does apple even give the option of keeping it off?
Why not just give the option of not using a password instead?