Computers & Electronics

What's the safest place to keep important data on your computer/email?

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  • Feb 14th, 2014 11:28 am
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Jr. Member
Jan 7, 2014
164 posts
Vancouver

What's the safest place to keep important data on your computer/email?

Where do you keep important data or personal stuff on your computer? People even have important data that they keep in their email accounts, in body of email or as attachments. I imagine your computer's hard drive is gonna be safer than your email. But your computer can get hacked too. External hard drive...but that could be stolen or as in my case, the drive died and I lost it all. What do you suggest?
10 replies
Banned
User avatar
Feb 15, 2008
26318 posts
3242 upvotes
Calgary
A RAID-1 locally, rsync'ed to a remote hard drive somewhere else, that is protected with an encryption key.
TodayHello wrote: ...The Banks are smarter than you - they have floors full of people whose job it is to read Mark77 posts...
Member
Aug 11, 2007
300 posts
44 upvotes
On an encrypted Drive on the computer with regular backups offsite.
Member
Nov 30, 2010
226 posts
171 upvotes
Toronto
a more practical question is how secure you want it. We could be throwing you the Pentagon's top secret security policies at you but that wouldn't help you because it's probably way more secure and safe than you would ever need.

Keep in mind ever security/backup solution has holes, there is no such thing as perfect security. I'm also assuming by safe you mean secure (prevent authorized access) or accessible (minimize data corruption). The two are slightly mutually exclusive in the sense that to prevent data corruption you can have infinitely many backups (on multiple cloud servers, on multiple hard drives across the globe at the risk of a greater chance in security breach due to the number of different systems) on the flip side of the coin we could suggest you use a massive encryption system which requires multiple keys to access at the risk of losing one key and you lose access to the data
Jr. Member
Jan 7, 2014
164 posts
Vancouver
Nuts, long post accidentally deleted.

Okay, short version of it, Dardragon, I agree, I can see both sides of it and I want something accessible for myself and yet not allow unauthorized access.

As far as encryption, is Truecrypt what people (Mark, Streamrider) are talking about? Never used that program because my external WD comes with its own password protection system.
Newbie
Jan 13, 2014
32 posts
8 upvotes
Vancouver
Tax, personal, kids pics - encrypted by encfs4win on Win machine, backed up to ext HD.

on phones and tablets, I use cryptonite, encdroid, boxcryptorclassic. Very important: if you want to be able to move encfs encrypted files from one place to another (phone to Win, winnto tablet, phone to cloud) make sure you encrypt them using the same .encfs.xml file. this file holds your key, encrypted with your password. For example:
1. On my phone, I created a folder PhoneEncrypted1, using boxcryptor classic (not new box cryptor made for cloud sharing) or Cryptonite (open source). Then, I add (encrypt) pictures, t4, etc, in subfolders.
2. Upload some of the encrypted files or folders under PhoneCrypted1 to box or dropbox or webdav or whereever
3. On Win machine, either sync the whole PhoneCrypted1 or some files or folders in it
4. From time to time, run backup to ext hd

Note: avoid syncing .encfs.xml to cloud, but have one cloud acct with nonimportant, nonencrypted stuff, whrre you can just have a copy of
.encfs.xml as a backup. if you loose the file, no way you can decrypt other foldrrs or files
Newbie
Jan 13, 2014
32 posts
8 upvotes
Vancouver
for passwords, I use:
1. KeePass for win, 1.x version, compatible with
2. android version, keepassdroid

sync the two and keep the pwd file backed up on ext hd

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