I use Truerypt and Dropbox. They play well together.
ps. I have repeatedly encountered people who falsely assume that Truecrypt does not allow incremental backups with Dropbox. The thinking behind this seems to be assumption cipher-block chaining (CBC) is used. Truecrypt uses XTS mode.
Does Truecrypt sync changes when a file inside the container is changed, or when the container its self is unmounted? I seem to recall having issues with this a few years ago when I tried it out. Probably something to do with Truecrypt maintaining a filesystem lock or something?
Needless to say, with encfs on Dropbox, files are synced as soon as they are changed.
Thought so. Truecrypt is no use for me then. I need something that will sync changes as they happen, or at least shortly afterwards. I don't want to have to unmount and remount my Truecrypt container once an hour or whatever to sync changes.
Assuming the size of the files isn't that big, you could always keep an unencrypted copy that you actually work on, and then periodically a script would mount the container, rsync the unencrypted directory to it, and unmount it so it can be synced.
Sure the unencrypted copy would be exposed, but not to any process that couldn't already access the mounted directory, as far as I can see.
1. Keep TC container in a non-shared location on local disk
2. Mount it, keep it mounted
3. Periodically backup this location to your Dropbox folder
Now, the trick is to use backup software that is capable of
(a) shadow copying
(b) incremental file updates
Shadow copying works around .tc file being locked.
Incremental updating keeps things quick.
The only Windows software I know that is capable of this is Bvckup 2 - http://bvckup2.com
(I posted this earlier, but then deleted the post as it read kind of spammy. But this is the way to handle TC container backup, so here it is again. And that's one gem of a backup program too, totally worth a plug).
Then you end up with duplicate local copies of your entire container. Seems very wasteful to me... Especially as TrueCrypt forces you to pre-allocate all the space that you think you'll need.
I don't know whose thinking that is, but when I recommend against Truecrypt on Dropbox, it's because you can't auto-merge two diverging Truecrypt volumes even if the two changesets are unrelated.
Comments
I use Truerypt and Dropbox. They play well together.
ps. I have repeatedly encountered people who falsely assume that Truecrypt does not allow incremental backups with Dropbox. The thinking behind this seems to be assumption cipher-block chaining (CBC) is used. Truecrypt uses XTS mode.
Does Truecrypt sync changes when a file inside the container is changed, or when the container its self is unmounted? I seem to recall having issues with this a few years ago when I tried it out. Probably something to do with Truecrypt maintaining a filesystem lock or something?
Needless to say, with encfs on Dropbox, files are synced as soon as they are changed.
TC containers are not accessible while mounted.
Thought so. Truecrypt is no use for me then. I need something that will sync changes as they happen, or at least shortly afterwards. I don't want to have to unmount and remount my Truecrypt container once an hour or whatever to sync changes.
Assuming the size of the files isn't that big, you could always keep an unencrypted copy that you actually work on, and then periodically a script would mount the container, rsync the unencrypted directory to it, and unmount it so it can be synced.
Sure the unencrypted copy would be exposed, but not to any process that couldn't already access the mounted directory, as far as I can see.
No, no. A proper setup is like this -
The only Windows software I know that is capable of this is Bvckup 2 - http://bvckup2.com(I posted this earlier, but then deleted the post as it read kind of spammy. But this is the way to handle TC container backup, so here it is again. And that's one gem of a backup program too, totally worth a plug).
Then you end up with duplicate local copies of your entire container. Seems very wasteful to me... Especially as TrueCrypt forces you to pre-allocate all the space that you think you'll need.
I don't know whose thinking that is, but when I recommend against Truecrypt on Dropbox, it's because you can't auto-merge two diverging Truecrypt volumes even if the two changesets are unrelated.