What if PC dies?

[andysmitherton]

Hi there,

I’m curious with cryptomator. What if my PC dies that it is installed on or my google drive gets removed overseas, will my cryptomator password and phrase work on any other installed cryptomator on another PC? Or is it locked to the PC/google drive? SO in google drive I see the two files Master Key and the notepad, so I assume its safe there cause those will need my password to unlock?

[Michael]

Hi.

@andysmitherton

will my cryptomator password and phrase work on any other installed cryptomator on another PC?

yes (as long as you have your vault files available)

@andysmitherton

Or is it locked to the PC/google drive?

no

@andysmitherton

SO in google drive I see the two files Master Key and the notepad, so I assume its safe there cause those will need my password to unlock?

The masterkey file is part of your encrypted vault and is needed to unlock it in combination with your vault password. (it is crucial for your vault, do not delete/move/rename it)

Why is the masterkey stored in the cloud?

Inside the storage location of a Cryptomator vault, you will find a file called masterkey.cryptomator. This file is stored in the cloud to allow convenient access to a vault on different devices. What does this file contain? This file contains encrypted data, which is needed to derive the masterkey from your password. The file does not contain the decrypted masterkey itself. In addition, some metadata about the vault (e.g., the version of Cryptomator used to create it) is also stored in this fi…

The rtf file “important.rtf” that is stored in the same folder as the masterkey files is not encrypted and is created to explain what you see in this folder, and that you should not rename/move/delete/copy anything from/to it. This is not where you store the files you want to encrypt. This is just the place where cryptomator places your encrypted files. This is the folder you want to sync to your online provider.
When you unlock your vault with your password, a new “drive” is created. There you can find a file “welcome.rft” This is the place where you want to store the files in, that you want to have encrypted.
(as described in the rtf file)

PS: remember to do backups of your files. If your loose access to your vault (for what ever reason), there’s no way to decrypt the files anymore. Just like it is with any other encryption solution.

[andysmitherton]

thanks very much for the explanation.