Backup and restore to Cryptomator drive (Windows 11)

Hi.

I am using Windows 11 and I wanted to use the integrated backup and restore feature of Windows 11 to backup my Windows drive to an WebDAV cloud. Therefore I thought I could unlock my vault and setup this new created drive letter D: as my backup drive. But actually I cannot select this drive because Windows 11 doesn’t recognize it in this dialog

But the drive D: is shown under “This PC”. Is that something that doesn’t work? Why?

Cryptomator desktop does not create an actually volume drive but a virtual drive to show the virtual file system (and thus your files in the vault) in your explorer. I assume that windows backup and restore relies on a physical storage device or a network drive. I am not sure if virtual drives are treated as network, but it’s worth that you hit the button and try it.

I would have to enter a network path and credentials. Entering D:\ is not possible.

Honestly I am a bit confused. I thought this is one of the basic scenarios you want to do with Cryptomator. Any suggestions to have an encrypted backup of my drives sync with my WebDav folder?

I use Personal Backup to backup my files into a vault.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try when I get Cryptomator to work. I just retried Cryptomator but it doesn’t really work even when I manually copy the files to the virtual drive. The transfer of the files is super slow. But if I copy the files to the WebDAV drive directly it is fast.

I recommend to use WinFSP instead of WebDAV as volume type.

I think I am already using WinFSP. At least when I tried to install it, it told me that I am using an old version. So I updated WinFSP, rebooted and disconnected and remapped the HiDrive cloud but it still seems very slow. I just tried Cx explorer app on my Android phone in the same network and it is much faster than on my Windows 11 laptop. It is strange. When I copy a file it completed till 99 % directly and after that it takes minutes to complete even small files.

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Please check your vault options. There’s a volume type. It should be configured as FUSE.
This has nothing to do with the hidrive connection. It’s about the virtual file system (volume type) that is used to display the vault content in your file explorer.

Thanks for your help.

Before Cryptomator can run probably the access to the WebDAV drive should work accurate, right? But when I copy files to that drive without Cryptomator vault it seems already very slow. It looks like connection with my Windows 11 laptop takes long to access the HiDrive. When I access the HiDrive with my phone in the same network it almost instantly opens the folders. I don’t know really what I can do here to check what makes Windows 11 slow or if it is just my personal feeling but it takes too long to upload 100 MB e.g. With my internet connection it shouldn’t take long.

Ah, ok. Sorry I misunderstood you.
Unfortunately I cannot say why the hidrive connection is so slow on your system because I do not use this provider. I once tried to establish a direct WebDAV connection to OneDrive instead of using the OneDrive sync client and it was also a terrible slow experience.
Doesn’t offer HiDrive a sync client?

Oh wow. I didn’t know that this exists. I will try that when I have time. Thank you so much.

The HiDrive sync app doesn’t make a difference. It’s maybe faster when I specify a local path where the client syncs the folder with the cloud but that’s not what I want because I do not want the Cryptomator vault with all it’s data locally stored. When I disable the syncing and just setup a mount drive for the cloud storage it is same slow like before because I think it uses the same Windows WebDAV technology by mapping a network drive.
I don’t know what I can do here. To open a folder with 726 sub folders takes on my phone a few seconds. On my laptop it takes around 20 seconds.

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I read that you should disable turn off detect automatically detection of LAN settings. I already thought that is the fix but it doesn’t make a difference.

Maybe this is an option for you then.

Maybe this solves also the connection problems you have when mounting your cloud storage.

Wow, thank you. After all those hassle, that works. It would be nicer to have the cloud storage directly integrated in Windows explorer than using another client but at least this works as expected. Upload has a real working progress bar and it uses 100 % of my internet bandwidth.

These guys also have Mountain Duck as (paid) solution. With this you can mount your storage in Windows explorer, but without having to use the slow Windows Webdav integration. I do not use it by myself, but maybe you wanna give it a try.
(and Mountain Duck also supports cryptomator vaults)