Encryption Means Great Backups Needed 2
For a few years now, Linux installations have offered to encrypt our HOME directories as part of the installation. On portable devices, this is a great idea – after all, the risk of loss or stolen equipment on a portable device is real.
Portable Devices NEED Encryption
For a while, I ran virtual machines on a laptop inside a Truecrypt partition. Encryption is good for some things, but doing it badly does still happen. I still use Truecrypt on my laptops.
Dangers
However, when we encrypt data, that makes most file-level recovery tools worthless should anything bad happen. Hopefully, only 1 file will be corrupted, but what happens if a disk sector fails? What if that failed sector is holding part of the encryption keys? Screwed, we are.
What can be done to fight this nearly complete data-loss? Backups, of course. For a less-trivial backup command.
Backups to the Rescue
Once again the lowly backup is our savior. As I learn more and more about computers, I keep discovering that backups are the key to recovering after issues, any issue. These can be hardware, logical corruption, human stupidity, security and now, encryption issues.
Backups do not solve all problems, but without a great backup, losing some or all data really is likely. I’ve been preaching about backups here for years. Have you gotten Backup Religion yet?
Please encrypt all your portable devices AND have good backups for any data stored on them that is not stored elsewhere too.
Should we backup the encrypted file/partition or the unencrypted data?
It doesn’t matter to me, provided you can restore it later. The backup is 10%, the restore is 90%.
Test it to be certain. Don’t trust what other people claim. Test it yourself, regardless.