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From lifehacker comes this comparison between FileVault and BitLocker, the two respective native file encryption systems for OS X and Vista.

The main differences boil down to BitLocker being used to lock down the entire operating system, while FileVault only locks down the user’s home directory. BitLocker requires much more setup in that you have to have a special encrypted partition that Vista is installed on, as well as have the unencryption keys stored on a USB stick. This USB ‘key’ is needed to allow Vista to boot. The author of the article feels that BitLocker is better because of the total lock-down of the hard disk. While that is overall more secure, FileVault I feel is more efficient since it only encrypts the user’s home directory which is where all the sensitive information is going to be stored anyhow. While I haven’t benchmarked either encryption method I’d imagine that FileVault probably has higher performance since BitLocker would have to do on the fly encryption and decryption of every single file the OS needs access to. Not only that I feel like backups would probably be more difficult to do on a BitLocker partition than simply backing up FileVault’s encrypted home directory.

In any case it is good to see that OS vendors are including such basic security mechanisms directly into the operating system. The more security the better.