Is there a limit on logical volume size for FileVault? I'm curious about (and was unable to find documentation for) any size limits for FileVault in OSX (10.9.5 Server). I'm concerned about any sort of corruption/instability that could occur after encrypting a 70-100tb logical disk.

I've run into this as an issue with volumes larger than 70tb with TimeMachine and had to switch to a different product for my backups.

Ignore the "why are you doing this" or "why are you not using linux/bsd". For a wide variety of reasons, I'm stuck with OSX for this project and am unable to split the partition into smaller segments.

Any insight would be much appreciated!
According to Apple the maximum volume size and file size (using Mac OS X v10.5.3 or later) of a volume formatted with the HFS+ file system is close to 8 EB (exactly 2^63 - 2^31 = 9,223,372,034,707,292,160 B). This is also valid for encrypted volumes.



One fact cannot be concealed: the monstrous Logical Volume (the FileVault2 "envelope") is highly vulnerable to drive failure. The failure probability is comparable to a RAID0. Since FileVault doesn't use evenly spread chunks you may recover more data after a drive loss.

Here is a comparison for 10, 11 or 12 disks (8 TB):

Survival probability (for new 8 TB disks and being optimistic):

Nr of disks  1st year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year 5th year
         10       84%      37%      15%       8%       5%
         11       83%      33%      12%       7%       3%
         12       82%      30%      10%       5%       2%


If the disks are smaller than 8 TB (and the number of disks is higher) the survival probability is even worse.