A question about backing up Veracrypt data
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So I would like to backup veracrypt data. the use case is that I have an large external drive where I would like to store my data but want it encrypted in case someone steals the drive. The drive has 5Tb of space. My plan is to back up the drive with another drive plus a image or file backup.
I tried using AOMEI backup to backup an ecrypted partition, but it's not compatible with veracrypt, so sector copy the entire partition resulting in a 5 Tb backup even though it's mostly empty. I then tried switching to a veracrypt container. What I have notice is that a image copy of the container only backed up the data and not the empty spaces, so the container currently have 80 gb of data, resulting in 80 gb backup.
I have experimented and added files and then do incremental backups. It only backs up the data changed, so if I added 10 mb, the incremental data is only 10 mb. Keep in mind that the backup is still ultra-slow. It takes 24 hours to backup the drive even if you make a incremental change. The only advantage to this is the small file size.
Is there some technical reason why this would not work. The restore volume can be mounted and I was able to read the file so far.
Hi Paul -- Typical backup software is great for backing up a system partition, although as you've experienced, some backup software is not a good fit with encrypted systems. But the best solution for backing up pure data collections like yours is often file synchronization software instead, and there should never be any compatibility issues with VeraCrypt-encrypted sources or target media. As long as you can mount the source and target containers or partitions and assign a drive letter, the file synchronization software can see all the files and analyze which ones are new or have changed according to file name, size, and time stamp. This seems like it might be the most efficient scheme for you, and considering your backup times that stretch into many hours, you could use a dose of efficiency. I happen to use a program called Beyond Compare, but a free alternative favored by many is called FreeFileSync, and it's worth considering.