I have a bunch of data stored on a network drive. The bandwidth is very limited. Can I now create a vault on this network drive and move data directly into it? Or do I have to download all data to local drive, encrypt it and move the vault to the network drive again? I hope the first option works. Thanks in advance.
The encryption is done by Cryptomator. So every file has to be processed by Cryptomator.
Which means I’m your case, every file has to pass the network twice. Even if the vault is stored on your network drive directly.
How should it even be possible to avoid this, when the files you want to encrypt are stored on system 1 (your network drive), and the processes that are actually doing the encryption are running on system 2?
I am not sure if this is the answer to my question, you are explaining how CM works over the network and closing your answer with a counter question? So is my understanding correct that the first option would work anyway?
Sorry, I just wanted to explain my answer. Didn’t meant to confuse you.
If you have your data on a Network Storage, you can create a vault on the same network storage with the Cryptomator app. You can create a vault at any place that is available for your OS and your user.
When you open your vault, there will be a new virtual drive that might look like a „local“ drive, but in fact your actual vault files are stored where you have configured the vault to be stored. In your case that’s the network drive.
Then place you unencrypted network files into the virtual drive to encrypt them.
BUT: you mentioned a poor network connectivity.
When you place an unencrypted file (from your network storage) into the virtual drive for encryption, the following will happen:
The file content will be loaded via your poor connection to your local Cryptomator app. Cryptomator will encrypt it and will generate the encrypted vault files. As the vault is stored on your network storage, the encrypted file will be transferred back via your poor connection to the storage.
In short: yes it is technically possible, but with a poor network connection be prepared for a time consuming process, maybe even Timeouts. You can avoid Timeouts by increasing the dokany timeout threshold
(you should try if this is really needed. Maybe the connection is not as bad as It sound 
)
It is not possible to encrypt files with Cryptomator directly on your network storage, means you’ll always have to use your connection bandwidth.
Thank you for the detailed answer. I would then better choose the safer option to download all data first and encrypt locally, since I don’t have a second backup.