My Backup & Restore thread. Tips, Tricks, & my experience

Novalissoide

nandohyphen1 Seems systematic and easily managed.😚
I do something similar, with one thing added: Encryption.

nandohyphen1

Novalissoide I do something similar, with one thing added: Encryption.

Thats what I can't figure out. How do you do encryption? Ideally I'd like something that I can decrypt on both my phone and computer

2WsF

nandohyphen1 you could use keepass. It allows attaching files, and each entry has a "notes" section you could use. Keepassdx on android and keepassxc on desktop are my clients of choice but I think there are others.

Novalissoide

nandohyphen1
Cryptomator. Bougt both pc and android, (less than 400 svenska kronor)

This is the system that fulfills most of my initial desires, certaintly the most vital of them:
Good cryptographic strenght
Android-Pc fully compatible
Local storage only option

nandohyphen1

Novalissoide if I set it up, will it wipe my USB drive?

Novalissoide

nandohyphen1 no, it's not a whole disc encryption, it is file for file.

It has a vault that can be on your device, or external, or cloud. Syncing to this vault makes a file encrypted. It has a learning curve, but not too bad.

https://cryptomator.org/

thmf

nandohyphen1 Just a thought. Once you figure out the Cryptomator part, consider buying a new flash drive for the encrypted backup and physically destroying the old one. Flash drives can't be properly erased (at least not easily). Some parts of your data may remain on the old flash drive after encryption and / or formatting, and could be recovered.
I don't know what's your threat model on this, but I imagine you data is more valuable to you than a price of a new flash drive.

nandohyphen1

Novalissoide I'll check it out! Thanks!

dhhdjbd

nandohyphen1

is there a reason you or the others are not using the cloud? (ofc with encrypted data)

nandohyphen1

dhhdjbd yeah. Its not free (well, it's free with limited storage). And while I don't mind paying for some services, cloud storage isn't in the budget right now. :) So USB drive it is! And honestly, I find it easier to restore from a USB drive rather than the cloud, because I just plug it in and copy away!

Drue3

dhhdjbd For me personally it is because of "collect now, decrypt later". A practice betting on quantum computers to be able to crack todays encryption in the future. So all one has to do is gather the encrypted data right now.

But I guess it varies from person to person.

maprennegrulla

No way doing this amount of shit manually. SeedVault works unless you screw it

nandohyphen1

maprennegrulla its only harder to set up the first time. Once folders and everything is set up, its just a matter of keeping everything up to date by creating a backup for each app. And I save photos monthly, so at the end of the month, I just copy that months photos to the drive. It takes me maybe 5 mins to fully backup my phone and all profiles this way

maprennegrulla

nandohyphen1 So USB drive it is!

USB+SeedVault=Love

horde

https://blog.matthewbrunelle.com/the-backup-and-restore-experience-on-grapheneos/

nandohyphen1

One Month Update

So it came time to do my monthly backup. So far the system is working well. I backed up all my apps, photos, and profiles. At least I can trust that this method will work to restore from whereas Seedvault may or may not work. Now that I have the system set up (from last month when I created all the folders) it only takes like 5 mins to backup my entire phone now. So far happy with it!

Oggyo

nandohyphen1 So it came time to do my monthly backup.

Great timing. March 31 is known as World Backup Day. 🙂

nandohyphen1

Oggyo really? What the heck! 🫨

nandohyphen1

Well, I've purchased a Pixel 9a to upgrade from my 6a. My plan is to flash GrapheneOS when it arrives using my 6a. Then I'll test my restore method with the USB stick. And once that phones set up, the fun part comes - trying the Duress PIN! I want to try it, since I need to factory reset the phone anyway, what better way than to test the Duress PIN? I'll keep updates here when my 9a arrives

nandohyphen1

Restoring from the flash drive is going well. I've manually installed all apps, and restored everything from the flash drive. Lots of work, but I have an exact replica of my 6a now which is good. Finishing my main profile and private space, then I'll move on to my other profiles tomorrow

dhhdjbd

Drue3

pretty sure any sane cloud service would use symmetric encryption for the data

(which is (if atleast aes-256 or similar) not vunerable to quantum computers)