Please recommend an encrypted backup strategy

FutileBreadMachine

FutileBreadMachine

FutileBreadMachine

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OK, my hardware I use for backups is:
1 Asustor NAS with 2x2TB drives mirrored.
1 External 2TB disk

I also have 2x500GB HDs I can use in an external cadddy.

I have been keeping all my home photos/videos in encrypted Truecrypt containers and saving them on my NAS, and then once in a while I copy them to the external 2TB drive so I have 2 copies. I just keep them encrypted since if we get robbed I don't fancy the idea of some thief having access to all my family stuff.

The first problem with this is that the TC containers eventually get full and then I have to make new containers and copy everything in, which is a pain. Secondly, Truecrypt got discontinued, and I have switched to using a Macbook a few months ago and had to get some old copy of Truecrypt since the latest one is broken on Macs. I also have to mount the containers from the NAS every time I want to use them.

Because of this I switched to using the Mac's build in encrypted sparsebundle file functionality, so I have the sparsebundle on the NAS and I can mount it on the Mac with the password saved in the keychain on the Mac.

This has issues too, since the Mac can't handle NTFS drives properly even with drivers installed, so it throws some error when I try to make the sparsebundle file on the NAS. I have to make the file locally and copy it over to the NAS. I only have a 256GB SSD on the Mac, so I can't make big enough containers.

The NAS has built in encryption too, but I thought if the NAS breaks, how will I access the data if I have to pull the hard drives out an put them in a PC? It might have some proprietary encryption which only it understands.

TLDR: Any ideas for a painless encrypted backup strategy for a Macbook + NAS?
 
wildest_jjk said:
A common piece of software on the forums for encrypted backups is: http://www.duplicati.com.

I'm still yet to use it but I certainly plan too. Not 100% sure it would suit your needs though? Certainly worth a look anyway.

Cheers.
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Nice one! Cheers mate, I will check that out. I like the incremental backup thing, at the moment I have to copy the entire 200GB+ TC containers to back them up even after adding just a few photos.
 
FutileBreadMachine said:
Nice one! Cheers mate, I will check that out. I like the incremental backup thing, at the moment I have to copy the entire 200GB+ TC containers to back them up even after adding just a few photos.
Click to expand...

Yeah I like the idea of incremental backups as well. One of the reasons I found out about that software is because I wanted to have offsite backups, but didn't want to use companies who hold the encryption keys. This software gives you much better security :)
 
S2KIP said:
Doesn't Time Machine support encrypted backups?
Click to expand...

I thought Time Machine was for backing up the entire laptop? Also, the laptop hard drive is too small to hold all my photos/videos, so I have to put everything on the NAS. Unless I start making folders per year, then maybe I could fit the current year on the macbook then move it over at the end of the year. I didn't really look into Time Machine yet since I am wary of going with a platform locked technology. I like that fact that something like a Truecrypt container can be opened on Windows and Mac machines.
 
You could also create a new volume within disk utility and put a password on it, then store that on your NAS. Then either store it in keychain or not depending on what you want. Yes Time Machine will back up everything, sorry I hadn't read the OP fully.

Depending on your model of mac depends how hard this is, but you could always connect a second drive and run it as a fusion drive.
 
S2KIP said:
You could also create a new volume within disk utility and put a password on it, then store that on your NAS. Then either store it in keychain or not depending on what you want. Yes Time Machine will back up everything, sorry I hadn't read the OP fully.

Depending on your model of mac depends how hard this is, but you could always connect a second drive and run it as a fusion drive.
Click to expand...

Yeah currently I use a sparsebundle file with a password to store my photos, but it has the same problem as a TC container, in that it has a fixed max size. Also, there is some bug with the disk utility where it cannot make the encrypted file directly on the NAS (I get some ioctrl error). So I can only make local sparsebundle files, then copy them over and then mount them. This means I would have to split out my videos into mutiple sparsebundle files since I need like a 300GB file to store the videos.

This encryption thing is a bit of a pain to manage at the moment - I have to mount my NAS photos file, then mount the external drive photos file and use Filesync to mirror the new files. Alternatively I have to copy the entire encryped photos file which takes ages and doesn't really make sense for only a few hundred MB more photos each time.
 
S2KIP said:
Is there a way to encrypt the whole NAS where you put in a password on startup?
Click to expand...

I don't know about on Startup, but it has built in AES encryption for folders, so I was originally going to use this, but then I don't know what will happen if the actual NAS dies - would I be able to unencrypt the encryped folders if I put the drives in a PC?

It's a pretty cool NAS with loads of features: Link
 
S2KIP said:
I'd have thought that the only thing that can unencrypt it would be the Asustor software.
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Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of. Looks like I will have to check out that Duplicati software, or maybe Time Machine. Will need to do some more research on those. The thing with online backup though is it will take ages to upload like 500GB. Should be worth it for peace of mind though.
 
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