Hello Slackware community...

Looking for some help with encrypted containers, and looking at the other forums on LQ, I am not sure where it should be posted. As I use Slackware and I am looking only for ideas on how to manage something like this...I hope it's ok.

I keep a lot of files in the cloud at various places. Google, Amazon, OpenDrive, DropBox, etc. etc. I've decided I'd like to keep those files encrypted...and there are a lot of them.

I have set up a file structure so I go into my "clouds" I can find what I need to find pretty easily. I know what I'll find in folder A, then in each subfolder because they are easily labeled, then B, etc. etc. If anyone got in, they could easily know what was in each folder as well.

Encrypting the files will not allow anyone to see what's in the files, but if you just follow along in the file structure, you'll kind of know what's there. Even if I encrypt a file called 1972taxes.pdf as 1972taxes.pdf.gpg, they know it's taxes. I don't want them to know what it is at all. If it was named PSHDPOUXHjhas.gpg, they couldn't figure it out.

In some cases, I can't encrypt entire folders and subfolders because in some cases, the files will be huge. A file could easily be 30 or 40GB. That just isn't acceptable or manageable if I want to get to one 20MB file inside a 40GB container.

I generally use the clouds only for backup. So, any files I have or generate gets backed up to the cloud in case I lose it. Once I am done with the file, I then back it up onto BD-R discs and put it away. I do not encrypt my local discs.

How would you handle storing encrypted files in the cloud that totaled 1TB and possibly 15,000 files of all different sizes?

My ideas are to have a ghosted file structure locally that tells me what each file is. Could be just directories on my local drive, could be a spreadsheet, could be a database...then I back it up to a local USB drive or something...

Any ideas? Does anyone deal with this at work?

james

This is not going to help you much, but have you considered not storing data online?

Personally I have 9TB's (3x3TB) of offline USB drives that is my "middleman" before they go to CD/DVD/BR. But this would only be feasible if you do not need to access the data from multiple locations.

Edit: Plus I have a 500GB that I store the data that I use day to day, plus multiple USB thumb drives one of which is encrypted that stores all my personal stuff (passwords, personal documents, etc).

Something that *may* help is Veracrypt. But the files would probably need to be transferred back and fourth to encrypt and access. Veracrypt can be found in Eric's repo.

https://www.cryfs.org/ - click the "Tutorial" button.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes, but...

- If my house burns down
- If a tornado takes out the house
- If I get robbed
- If I get flooded
- If I drop a drive and lose 3TB of data in one second
- If I plug in the drive and there is a power blip and fries the drive

I lose my data.

I would love to keep all my data locally but I think a good cloud backup plan works well. Even if I did have it all locally, I would still want it encrypted in the cloud. $60 a year from Amazon is a pretty good deal.

I don't need to have access to it from multiple locations, generally, but sometimes it has been handy.

I think in total, I have about 7TB of drive space locally, and about 8TB of optical media backed up. I currently have 15TB in the cloud across a couple of services.

James

That looks good, but I want to be able to encrypt it, push it to the cloud, delete it locally, and keep it in the cloud. This is what I use odrive.com for with Amazon. I can copy files to odrive, it syncs to Amazon...then I delete the file locally, and it stays in the cloud. I can sync it back locally, or just keep it up there.

From the description, it works with synchronization. If you delete from dropbox locally, it deletes from the cloud.

James

I think I have a solution for myself.

I use Tellico to keep track of my optical disks and their files, where they are stored, etc. etc. I am going to do the same thing with my cloud files. If I want a specific file, I search for the file name, I find it's location, get it, load it up, put the disc back. Done.

I will do the same for the cloud. I'll encrypt 10GB, or less, of files into a container and make a list of the files in it. I'll load the data into Tellico. I'll do the same kind of search in Tellico for the file, download it by file name, unencrypt, pull the file out, delete the rest...done.

Don't you have to encrypt and backup the Tellico data file(s)?