Encrypted Filesystem Options

The open filesystem and access methods at rsync.net make any number of encryption schemes possible - here are two that we especially like:

Duplicity

Duplicity is an rsync-like tool that takes the unencrypted files on your local end and transmits them to us, while performing a GPG encryption transformation on them. The data remains unencrypted on your end, and is encrypted on our end. Further, because it uses librsync, the transfers are very fast, efficient "changes only" uploads (a la rsync).

Encrypted Containers

The second solution consists of creating a file-backed (volume backed) filesystem on your system, and periodically unmounting it and rsyncing it to us. Simple as that.

So, if you are using Windows or Linux, you just download the excellent (and free) tool TrueCrypt and create a volume (which consists of a single large file) of equal (or smaller) size of your rsync.net account. Then you just use that as a local mount point, either running items directly off of it, or just mirroring content to it, and then once a day or week or month, you unmount that filesystem and rsync that one single X GB file to us.

Or if you use Mac OSX, you can just use the built-in disk utility to create a encrypted disk image. Same thing.

Summary

Because both methods (truecrypt and OSX disk image) use btree indexes, even though they are a big file of random data, they _can_ be efficiently "rsunc" to us in a changes-only-transfer kind of way.

The advantage of duplicity is that it is extremely simple and easy to setup and use, whereas the encrypted image method is a little more complicated, and you need to remember to unmount them to transfer, etc.

But the advantage of the encrypted disk images is that now your files can be encrypted on your local end as well, which is very nice.

We will, of course, provide full support for whichever method (or combination of methods) you choose.