I've used a service for over 10 years, that is a zero knowledge, no backdoor, published open source code system for validation of how it works, and it is the same type of technology as the one HaloHalo is talking about, you are completely safe with that kind of system as the computing power to crack it way too large for even governments to want to spend any real time cracking it, cheaper and quicker to torture you for the password
Good choice if you have one unit. I use two units so I don't need raid 6. I prefer the extra storage capacity.
I steered clear of that because: 1. I need access to my data immediately. Many files are many gigabytes in size and I don't have the time to have to upload/download/encrypt and decrypt if I want to access 40gb of data in a hurry. My storage solution is a combined access and backup solution. I don't want to archive material away remotely and then be unable to get at it. 2. I don't like the idea that an organization can prevent me accessing my data, or that an internet outage can prevent me accessing my data. And I don't like speed of access to data being determined by the speed of an internet connection. 3. I don't like the idea that some other agency can access it, even though, as you say, they might not have the inclination to try and break the encryption. It works for some people. It depends on what your priorities are.
Take a look at that Spideroak thing Mike, I've signed up today for the free trial and will probably go for the 1 TB solution next week sometime, that's the first service I've seen offering the space I need and the privacy at a price I am willing to pay, it's not that I need the level of privacy they offer (apart from not wanting my source code open to theft) but its just nice to know that it is a secure system. It is not a replacement for my disk backup routine though, it will be an additional assurance to me.
Yeah we are talking a different scale here, I've never seen anything until today which would be good enough for large quantities of data. On point 1, you are only uploading and downloading, the encryption is transparent and no slower than TrueCrypt (which is very fast). On point 2, yep someone could shut down the service and that would not be fun, totally agree. On point 3, we are talking likely decades to break AES256 (by brute force attack) with the best supercomputers Actually probably billions of years unless real working quantum computers come along or of course unless someone finds an algorithmic way to defeat AES128 and AES256 The cloud system that I use for my small amounts of information is HIPAA and GLBA compliant and uses an extremely elegant approach to encryption which employs AES256, the hosts that have my data have no chance of reading any of it. Like the Spideroak thing that Paul mentions, the one I use makes your data secure but does not make you anonymous, the accounts in both have unique ID's tied to your billing account so not great for terrorists thank god
I feel that governments don't like encryption precisely because it's hard to read your private information. I can visualise legislation compelling you to hand over encryption keys or making encryption illegal to use. All the theoretical talk about it taking a billion years to crack your files is irrelevant when you would just be persuaded to hand over your keys to law enforcement by the threat of imprisonment until you did. I wouldn't put anything on a cloud that I wasn't comfortable placing in the public domain for example. It has already been deemed lawful in several nations to force you to hand over your passwords at the border to they can inspect your laptop or cellphone. I seem to remember there being a case where a guy was detained by customs for having encrypted files on his computer and detained until he handed over the key.
I have pictures of my kids on here and I store a lot of stuff already in the cloud, but I would not say that I would want every picture of my children available publicly, nor would I want pictures that are good enough to earn money from to be publicly available. For what I am planning on using this SpiderOakOne thing for I would happily hand over the password if threatened by the government, it's just my photo collection I wouldn't be happy with them having access to my source code and products but it wouldn't bother me too much. So I could say that I would be happy to backup stuff to the cloud that I wasn't that happy to put in the public domain, not sure anyone would want to share their complete family photo album publicly but they would probably want to know they had another copy of it that wasn't in their own house. As a photographer it is the CR2 files that matter to me and I have only ever had those backed up by the means I suggested in my opening post, I do leave one copy offsite but having local backup and cloud backup makes me infinitely happier.
Well they probably would use either service if they were keeping a low profile, don't really want to discuss that sort of thing that much as there is no need to give them hints I probably should not even have mentioned the word
My disks are basically two sets of identical drives large enough to manually make a mirrored set, you are right, it was harder when the content spanned more than a single drive and as a photographer that is the single thing consuming most of my space, that and my editing history in Lightroom which represents a vast number of man hours investment and which I would also hate to lose, so that gets backed up many ways too. Basically eliminating drive spanning is why I got the 3TB drives so I could relieve space pressure on the other 2TB drives. But I don't have anything so critical that I need to mirror real time, SVN takes care of code, the most I can ever lose is a couple of hours work as I follow the mantra of regular commits (my commits do all build whether they all work is another matter ) Photography, well for images I generally keep the Compact Flash cards as my ultimate backup, they have an archival life well beyond any other easily available medium, basically I use the cards like film, when it is about to run out I buy a new one, usually a good few new ones
Checked the speed and it's pretty good even on a mobile broadband connection, just uploaded about 250MB of images in about 6 minutes ( I get 6GB a month on the phone for free )
That's what TrueCrypt hidden volumes are for And of course no one uses those properly as you have to keep the outer volume up to date otherwise plausible deniability is out of the window and they just cut off your fingers until you tell them the password for the inner volume I shouldn't add smiley's it's a serious subject
No I was just explaining why I would be so profligate as to upload 250MB of worthless data over my phone my work gives me the phone and the data for free, the images I've uploaded will be deleted, I think I'm going to buy this tonight and start a proper upload £85 a year for that much online storage is just great! I owe you a beer or three for telling me about it
Ah be careful a sudden dark sense of humour is apparently a precursor for dementia I've been using that line for years, TrueCrypt was and is a great program thank god I had lots of copies of version 7.1 available when the authors pulled the plug on it. Often described as one of the most beautiful bits of code ever seen by people who have inspected the source. The NSA must have been in on that closure in some way.
Oh I see Ah nae bother just glad you found it of use Jim. The website I've not been of for ages and it has been revamped but they are very open in their approach explaining the tech as it is. I can't see it on their latest website revamp but they even disclosed that they (at that time) hadn't had 1 visit from FBI/NSA requesting data but said they had no problem divulging any members data as they knew it was secure. I like their approach/outlook.
The other problem of course is that an unformatted brand new disk is not full of this kind of stuff (not encrypted data by the way just for illustration )
The fact that the program by default launches and logs in to the service automatically on your own PC is a potential issue if security is your primary concern as your backup is at risk if your laptop or desktop is stolen, but I will switch off that option and make it force me to type the password. I did read a critique blog post that they made regards Mega, it was very detailed and seemed to be fair, like you I like their approach, they seem to know their stuff.
Well I got the SpiderOakOne 1TB account, turns out that it is not that fast, but probably not their fault, upload speed on my slow home broadband account is about 10GB a day so it is going to take me a long time to back my stuff up the first time Saying that, the impact on the PC is ZERO, the network is not busy and the program that is doing all the backup is using less than 1% of the processor and having done some sums I think it is probably maxing out my upload speed. I'll report again tomorrow when I get it back onto the work network which is substantially quicker.
