Hey I’m new to Cryptomator and I plan to use it to keep my data safe in Mega.nz. I have a few questions regarding vault’s integrity.
Can I have file sync enabled while the vault is unlocked?
Initially I thought there is a 1 to 1 correspondence between my files and files inside “d” directory in vault. But I see that “d” directory can actually contain more files. Are those additional files some kind of dictionaries? What if they are lost?
Is it possible to irreversibly damage the entire vault?
Is abrupt PC shutdown during vault being unlocked dangerous?
Is the following scenario possible?
I change some files in an unlocked vault
Automatic sync to the cloud starts
I lose internet connection and don’t notice it, some transfers are not done
I delete local copy of the vault
Vault in the cloud is completely damaged and unusable
I performed an experiment. I created a vault with ~5000 files, 140MB total. I started deleting files from “d” directory and mostly it resulted in missing files in the vault, which I expected. But deleting some files finally caused the vault to lose access to the majority of remaining data. Right now my “d” directory is about 80MB, while data after mounting is 0.5MB, so clearly majority of data is inaccessible. Can I fix this?
The short answer to the gist of your questions is that you are not protected from intentional destruction of your data (or unintentional, for that matter). That’s what back-ups are for.
If your encrypted data files are corrupted, some or all of the data is lost just as it would be in a conventional file system. Cryptomator might detect certain kinds of corruption or data loss that a traditional file system would not, but that does not bring your data back.
I have at least one, and often two back-ups of my essential files in addition to the primary copies. In my case, my Cryptomator vault fills the role of one of the two back-ups because I want one of my copies in the cloud and Cryptomator encrypts that data for me. An added bonus is that I use the Cryptomator mobile app so I have portable, secure access to that data.
I think some people use Cryptomator as the primary and sole repository of the data they want to secure. I think that’s a very bad idea. And that’s not to disparage Cryptomator. I just view any data store as always subject to unexpected loss, and I must plan for the possibility of that event.
