Disk Mounting

jimvee

<div class="IPBDescription">Mounting encrypted disk</div>I've made an encrypted external disk. If quit Knox and connect the disk via firewire, the disk mounts, I run Knox and enter the password to access. However, if Knox is running when I connect the disk, it doesn't mount, so it's not accessible. Is this right? What if I wanted to connect a second encrypted disk - would it even be possible to do this?



Also, please clarify for me. I can use Silverfast or similar software to make a normal backup of files to an encrypted disk or vault. But I shouldn't include encrypted files in my backup?



Thanks

MikeT

Hi Jimvee,



When you mount your encrypted external drives, you should be able to open those drives and see the sparsebundle/vault file used to create the encrypted volume. Drag this into the Knox's Vaults list (Knox > Preferences > Vaults) and you should be able to mount it via Knox, you can do this for all encrypted disks.



As for the Backup files, you should only either back up the Knox vaults when the vaults is closed or back up the Knox's backup folders.



Knox uses Apple's "sparse bundle" technology for its OS X 10.5+ compatible (the default) vaults. Sparse bundles should always be excluded from Time Machine and other backup/sync products specifically because if they are currently mounted by OS X at the time of a backup, any utility that backs it up will appear to "succeed" but data integrity is not guaranteed. At some point you may end up with a sparse bundle that cannot be mounted if it is restored.



That's one of the prime reasons why Knox's built-in backups will always close/dismount the vault: it makes the resulting backup a consistently valid copy of the original.



I hope that helps.