Generally, I copy the encrypted data from my phone and paste it onto my computer as a backup in case I lose the device.
When I open the vault to add some files, and then close it, I notice that the archive shows the files split up (which is evident from the size of each individual file). I wondered if it’s possible to perform a copy/paste that overwrites the folders every time I want to make a manual backup.
I tried it and it seems to work fine; however, when I create subfolders within the application, I notice that the organization of the encrypted data changes. Is it still possible to copy and paste in order to overwrite the files previously saved on the computer?
On desktop I use Synchredible to perform manual backups between different drives, including an external SSD. It updates only changed files and folders every time I manually run the predetermined task. However, the drive letters must be constant if you don’t want to have to set up the task every time. I am not sure if this would work with a phone connected to a PC as I have never tried it.
Not sure what you meant above, but if you want to backup your cryptomator folders by manually copying (e.g. location A) to your backup (location B) and overwriting the backups, I don’t think this is the right way to do it because you would be leaving leftover folders over time. You could delete the entire folder and re-copy it every time but this is not optimal, especially for larger backups. That’s why I suggested Synchredible to copy only changed files and folders. You have to set up a manual task. Make sure it is a one way backup (one way arrow from location A to B, not two way arrows between the locations). This will keep your manual backup up to date when you run it. But as mentioned above I have not tried it with a mobile phone as location A so it remains to be seen if it will work. Test it with other files before applying to your backups.
In general, if you overwrite something, you always lose the old data. So overwriting a folder means to delete the folder and its content and replace it with a different folder (with maybe different content).
So no, you can’t overwrite folders to only add data in general. This only works if the former directory is empty.
Regarding Backups: It is no problem to restore a vault from a backup, since it is just a collection of folders and files.