I have intentionally remained with an old but stable version of cryptomator (1.4.15) for a few years (the reasons don’t matter for my question below). The time has come for me to upgrade to the latest cryptomator version and to create some fresh vaults (no auto-migration necessary in this case). What I wanted to ask is which volume type (WebDAV, dokany, winSFP) is considered the safest for dropbox on windows 10/11 for storing important files. The files are small, no worries about huge files etc.
Until now I have been using webDAV with dropbox on Windows 10 with minimal issues. I care only about file safety and integrity and I do NOT care about speed at all. I only use windows 10 (maybe windows 11 in the future).
Which volume type is the most suitable one when prioritising only file integrity and no surprises (corrupted files, missing files or directories, long file name compatibility etc)? I only care about maximum stability/dependability for dropbox on windows 10/11, transfer speed and file size do not matter.
Important note: I would like to stay with a stable version and avoid having to upgrade frequently. For this reason I assume Dokany might be unsuitable for my needs as they update frequently and introduce breaking changes sometimes. Do I have any reason to choose WinSFP or will WebDAV provide max stability for my needs?
I prefer WinSFP.
Webdav feels outdated to me and has limitations I cannot accept (filesize).
Dokany worked as well but has to be updated quite often. And Cryptomator does only support version 1.x.
Never had a problem with WinFSP (used with windows 10 and 11)
I have a few YES/NO questions if you don’t mind, short answers are fine, just trying to understand:
Is WebDAV being slowly phased out or it is expected to be maintained and to keep working as usual for years? The project seems to have stopped development a decade ago, is this correct / being phased out?
Is one or the other (Webdav/WinFSP) more compatible with dropbox or is this not relevant in any way?
Does WinFSP require frequent updating? Also, is it normally updated manually (e.g. with cryptomator updates) or does it do background updates that could break things sometimes? I am asking as I would like to stick with a stable Cryptomator/WinFSP version for long time to avoid surprise bugs that could affect critical files (despite other offline backups it would still be a problem for me).
Also I wanted to ask @infeo and @overheadhunter, for critical files where integrity is of max importance, would you recommend WinFSP or is it still better to stick to WebDAV as size/speed do not matter to me, only stability/integrity. I have read many of your posts and it seems the initial WinFSP integration for windows a few years ago was problematic and was abandoned for quite some time initially. Are we now at a point where WinFSP is more suitable for critical files than WebDAV (for Windows 10/11 and Dropbox)?
It will most likely keep working as usual for years. There won’t be significant updates for it though, WebDAV integration is pretty much “done”.
It’s not really about compatibility with a cloud storage but more like compatibility with the operating system and applications. In our opinion, compatibility with WinFsp is higher than with WebDAV.
I wouldn’t say “required” but more like “recommended”. You don’t “have to” update WinFsp. It is and will be included in the EXE installer of Cryptomator but you can also download the MSI installer without WinFsp from Cryptomator’s website.
WinFSP is case-sensitive, Dokany isn’t (like Windows). If you have two files named Test1.txt and test2.txt, the command dir test*.* will find one file with WinFSP while Dokany finds two.
Thank you for pointing that out. I am only going to use WinFSP on Windows 10/11, I assume this would prevent me from accidentally having both test.txt and Text.txt due to using windows explorer, is this correct? Or do I still need to monitor this myself to avoid this situation?
You can’t have test.txt and Text.txt in the same folder using Windows. And no, you don’t have to pay attention for that. The problem comes up, when you search for files. E.g. you have holiday01.jpg, Holidays02.jpg and HOLIDAYS03.jpg on your disk. dir *holi*.* will find 3 files, when you use Dokany and only one, when you use WinFSP.
Thank you for letting me learn something new again.
Your example works for me on Cryptomator drives with volume type Dokany and Fuse. It does not work in native windows folders.
New-Item : Die Datei "C:\Users\######\desktop\tmp\Holla.txt" ist bereits vorhanden.
In Zeile:1 Zeichen:1
+ New-Item -Type File -Name Holla.txt
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : WriteError: (C:\Users\Michael\desktop\tmp\Holla.txt:String) [New-Item], IOException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : NewItemIOError,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.NewItemCommand
