4 ms·

Any reason you can't use truecrypt/whatever your favourite OS provides on top of Dropbox?

• StavrosK 16y ago
  Yes, Dropbox will have to up/download the entire multi-gigabyte file container each time, as far as I know.
  • JoachimSchipper 16y ago
    I'm pretty sure that Dropbox uses [EDIT: was "something like the rsync algorithm."] something like Tarsnap's algorithm: break a file into data-dependent blocks and upload all changed blocks (optionally with rsync). (For a toy implementation, let everything between two NUL bytes be a "block" - you see how this is a big win for detecting changes and deduplication.) This is supported by e.g. http://serverfault.com/questions/52861/how-does-dropbox-version-upload-large-files http://serverfault.com/questions/52861/how-does-dropbox-vers.... TrueCrypt and alternatives definitely make sure that writing one unencrypted sector only changes one encrypted sector worth of data - compare their performance with gpg'ing the entire disk on each write, and you'll quickly see why.
    • StavrosK 16y ago
      Hmm, I will have to look into that, although I think that Dropbox only does per-file diffing... Thanks for the recommendation. EDIT: Interesting, that makes the TrueCrypt suggestion not only viable, but desirable. Thank you.
      • deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
        • deleted 16y ago
          [deleted]
    • pasbesoin 16y ago
      A past (small) discussion of this -- mostly just a link to information on the Dropbox forums: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2043191 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2043191