backupencryptionexternal hard drivewindowswindows 8
File history in Windows 8 is great, but it saves my files on an external drive without any encryption, and stores them using the exact same folder structure as the originals.
If a bad guy gets his hands on the hard drive, it could basically not be easier to get to my important files.
Is there any way to encrypt the file history backup without breaking its functionality and without having to encrypt the original content itself?
I would assume that 7-Zip and other archiving tools compress before they encrypt, for the reasons stated in the linked blog post. But I was unable to find any documentation that confirms that, nor could I immediately ascertain it from looking at the 7-Zip source code.
However, I can explain why filenames aren't encrypted. As you might be aware, the 7z format contains a header with the file information and other metadata. 7-Zip will not encrypt this header unless you explicitly enable it. You can do this by checking the Encrypt file names box at the bottom of the Encryption segment of the archive creation screen on Windows, highlighted in red below.
On Linux and other Unix-like operating systems (and presumably the command line 7-Zip tool on Windows), you can enable header encryption by adding a -mhe=on switch to the 7z command.
Disclosure: I am the CEO and a Founding Partner of Code42
It's overkill. To make matters worse, it'll slow down your backups and delay data protection as the realtime monitoring wont work and encrypted data isn't compressible.
By using private data password (recommended) or generating your own key, you are ensured privacy. (Yes, you have to trust us on saying this, but unless you're a software/security expert personally studying/auditing the truecrypt code, you've got to trust something/someone.
If you have data so precious you can't trust anyone, doubling up encryption is reasonable. However, I'd only do that for that specific set of data - let CrashPlan handle the rest.
Best Answer
You can even use BitLocker to encrypt the drive where you make the backup and access that drive from your computer, so that File History does its job regularly.