I’ve recently started using Cryptomator to encrypt my files before uploading to Google Drive. So far, it works smoothly, but I’m a bit concerned about:
Long-term stability of large vaults (100GB+)
Whether file corruption can happen during frequent syncs
Any best practices for backup redundancy (besides just relying on the cloud provider)
Has anyone here been running Cryptomator with Google Drive or another cloud for a year+? I’d love to hear about your experience, especially around performance and reliability.
Synchronizing anything really large has some risk of contamination from synchronization if you add to that the encryption and the fact that everything is moving in the vault, the overall risk is higher.
Simply putting 100 GB of data in one vault would in my opinion be risky. I would break the data down into smaller chunks so if a vault does get corrupted you don’t lose everything all at once.
I have two primary Cloud drives and a third that acts as a backup for the first two. I synchronize the data from cloud drives one and two to Cloud Drive 3. However I do not have more than 100 GB of data per cloud and no more than 20 GB together in one vault. I use a service from a company called multcloud to keep Cloud drives in sync with each other so it handles the synchronization from cloud drives one and two the Cloud Drive 3 in the background all the time.
I am using several cloud services (including google) as backup locations for several vaults. Some of them bigger than 100gb. Some of them with files on demand feature (eg google file stream) Never lost a file to corruption so far.
nevertheless it’s important to have a solid backup strategy to mitigate the risk of corruption or unwanted file manipulation spreading in all of your backups.
This means that you should have at least 1 backup storage that keeps a history of your files. So you can go back to an older version of your files in case the latest one is damaged.
I am actually using the OneDrive synch to transfer my Cryptomator data to the cloud.
My backup startegy is the following:
I keep my data in clear on my D: drive (this is just ot minimize the backup image of the C:)
The Cryptomator data is also located on my D: drive but within the OneDrive folder.
I am using GoodSync (V10) to perform the following;
Every night, I synch automatically my data to my NAS
On demand, I synch my data with my Cryptomator vaults; I have 5 vaults and the total amount of data is around 640 GB. Once the synch is completed,
The Cryptomator vaults are synch to the OneDrive cloud automatically
I synch the Cryptomator vaults to a USB drive (a different one than the ones I referred to later) that is used only for that purpose
I have three 4 TB external USB drives to which
I synch my data in clear
I backup a copy of my Cryptomator vaults.
I keep copies of the C: drive backup images which is weekly based and deposited on my NAS
Why three external USB drive?
One of these drives is travelling with me. It has enough space on it to allow many C: drive images should my PC receive a Windows update whilst away from home. I usually make a C: drive image backup right after a Windows update.
For the two other drives, one is kept in a fireproof container at home, the other is kept in the bank safe. The C: drives images are synch across the USB drives.
I came with that plan because last spring my PC got corrupted and I had to restore the Cryptomator vaults from OneDrive. It took more than a week to rebuild them. That’s why I came with a backup strategy with belts and suspenders.
From now on, the files on OneDrive cloud are mainly to be accessed via the iPad Cryptomator app. My rule is that none of them should be modified remotely, i.e. any changes shall occur on my PC.