Newbie in need of help

[max.demian]

Hi - just got Espionage today, so apologies if these questions have already been answered. I have searched the forum and the software's in-built guide and help section without success.

1) I have Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, hence i followed the procedure to add the data folder and the relevant applications to Espionage, unfortunately the encrypted image that Espionage created only contained 4 sub-folders out of the 15 that the original 9in the trash now) had. As a consequence when i opened Outlook i had lost my identity and emails and folders, contacts etc

2) I have then renamed the encrypted folder 'Microsoft office data old", thinking that i would have simply moved back from trash the original one. thankfully i didn't, and simply used the restore function built into Espionage (ie i have simply clicked the 'minus' symbol) - the program has been busy 'restoring' ever since. that was 1h ago. Is it supposed to take this long?

3) on a related note, i never managed to back-up all of the files i had encrypted through espionage (not that many, a few gigabytes worth of) because it was taking for ever and after a few hours i gave up and rebooted. Is it supposed to take that long? I was trying to back-up to an external G-Tech drive connected to Time Capsule; I had disabled Time Machine for the encrypted folders

4) Finally, could someone please explain to me the difference between removing a folder altogether and un-checking the  'Enabled'? box? Before removing the folder altogether to fix my problem at 2), i tried un-checking the Enabled box but it did not seem to have any effect. When I launched Outlook it was still looking for the encrypted folder (with missing sub-folders) rather than the 'old' unencrypted one.

Many thanks in advance for your help.
GG

[max.demian]

The software just finished removing the encrypted version of the Microsoft Data folder, and replaced it with a clean one of the same - incomplete folder. I had to manually replace it with the one which was in the trash and i had copied because starting this whole procedure, thankfully.

How can i make sure that this does not happen again and actually protect my email files?

I am also running Intego Virus Barrier X6, just in case it is relevant.

thanks again.
GG

[mike]

Hi - just got Espionage today, so apologies if these questions have already been answered. I have searched the forum and the software's in-built guide and help section without success.

Hi Max, no apologies needed. We don't have a specific template for Office because the complex data structure of how Office handle data is not easy to work with Espionage.  

1) I have Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac, hence i followed the procedure to add the data folder and the relevant applications to Espionage, unfortunately the encrypted image that Espionage created only contained 4 sub-folders out of the 15 that the original 9in the trash now) had. As a consequence when i opened Outlook i had lost my identity and emails and folders, contacts etc

I'm sorry about what happened. Espionage should've had all 9 folders that it moved to Trash copied into the encrypted folder. I'm not sure what happened here. Can you tell us which folder you encrypted and did you follow the instruction laid out here:   
   http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2011/01/e ... -released/

2) I have then renamed the encrypted folder 'Microsoft office data old", thinking that i would have simply moved back from trash the original one. thankfully i didn't, and simply used the restore function built into Espionage (ie i have simply clicked the 'minus' symbol) - the program has been busy 'restoring' ever since. that was 1h ago. Is it supposed to take this long?

Depending on the size of the folder and the speed of your computer, it can take a few hours to restore the folder. I don't recommend forcing to kill it unless it has been really long like a day or two. Forcing to kill it can damage the files and the damage would be irreversible. This is why we place a copy of all of your files first in the Trash, just in case the process goes badly (happens very rarely).

Restoring the folder wouldn't bring the missing files back because Espionage will move the current files within the encrypted folder to a regular folder before removing the encrypted folder. Which is what you saw in your second post in this thread.

3) on a related note, i never managed to back-up all of the files i had encrypted through espionage (not that many, a few gigabytes worth of) because it was taking for ever and after a few hours i gave up and rebooted. Is it supposed to take that long? I was trying to back-up to an external G-Tech drive connected to Time Capsule; I had disabled Time Machine for the encrypted folders

Yes, it is normal for it to take a long time, even if it is a couple of gigabytes. The nature of encryption itself makes it complex to sync and to back up the data efficiently. Time Machine can back up the difference between the previous backups and the current data but the encryption makes this nearly impossible because the pattern in the encrypted folder are pseudo-random. I say nearly because the sparsebundle format allows for it to be synced/backed up via 8MB slices of data at a time. You still need the entire folder to be backed up at once to make a complete backup set.

In other words, Time Machine can back up 20-30kb worth of changes and you'll have a complete backup by merging the previous backup and the current changes. Espionage can only backup the entire 2GB folder for a 2GB encrypted folder.

4) Finally, could someone please explain to me the difference between removing a folder altogether and un-checking the  'Enabled'? box? Before removing the folder altogether to fix my problem at 2), i tried un-checking the Enabled box but it did not seem to have any effect. When I launched Outlook it was still looking for the encrypted folder (with missing sub-folders) rather than the 'old' unencrypted one.

The enable checkbox is for the password prompt or basically for any changes to occur. As long as it is enabled, you'll  get the password prompt to access this folder and apps can work with it after you enter the password. When it is disabled, the apps will not be able to access the content of this folder and you will not get a prompt.

In your case, Outlook was trying to locate the folder but the only time Outlook can see the data is when you unlock the folder and that can only happen when you enter the password to unlock the folder. Which means it has to be enabled first and unlocked. Did you ever get prompted for the password when you open Outlook?

The removal of the folder from Espionage is for removing the encryption and restoring it back to the original folder.

How can i make sure that this does not happen again and actually protect my email files?

It is hard to say what happened in this case, we'd need to know what exactly happened here. It should work correctly by following the instruction in this guide:
    http://www.taoeffect.com/blog/2011/01/e ... -released/

I hope this helps in some ways. Please let me know if you have more questions or need further help.

[max.demian]

Hello - thanks for your comprehensive reply:

1) yes i did follow the instructions provided

2) then i understand what happened. I rebooted the MAc because i thought it was frozen as the process was never ending

3) The folder I wanted to backup on the external drive is 830MB. After about 3h i killed the process. is it supposed to take that long? I then changed the location of the backup folder to the main, fixed internal drive, and in only took a few minutes (please note that the folder was ALREADY encrypted). is it normal to have such a difference? The external drive is connected to Time Capsule which is connected to my Mac through Ethernet cable, not Wifi

Thanks again

[balz4]

well good place to ask the doubt... thank you

[mike]

Hello - thanks for your comprehensive reply:

1) yes i did follow the instructions provided

2) then i understand what happened. I rebooted the MAc because i thought it was frozen as the process was never ending

3) The folder I wanted to backup on the external drive is 830MB. After about 3h i killed the process. is it supposed to take that long? I then changed the location of the backup folder to the main, fixed internal drive, and in only took a few minutes (please note that the folder was ALREADY encrypted). is it normal to have such a difference? The external drive is connected to Time Capsule which is connected to my Mac through Ethernet cable, not Wifi

Thanks again

Hi Max,

The backup process backs up the encrypted folder at once, it doesn't encrypt it again and you're right, it shouldn't slow down the speed of it. The backup uses the rsync protocol to backup to your external drive. I'm not sure why it is taking a while. How are you backing up to the Time Capsule? Did you tell Espionage to backup to a specific folder on the external drive and then tell Espionage to back it up via the menu bar app?

There are some known performance issues with drives attached to Time Capsule. First, the USB port slows it down to the max of 20-30MBps speed, plus the overhead of Time Capsule and AFP protocol, knocking it down around ~10MBps. For 830MB, it should take around 2 minutes at most.

[Psion]

Will espionage encrypt previous time machine backups of a folder on time capsule - i.e., that were made prior to using espionage? If not, is there a way to encrypt the backups of the files in that folder?

Also, how do I post a new topic / subject in this forum if I don't see anything similar?  I don't see a button to allow me to start a new topic.

[zsolt]

Hello Psion,

Espionage does not interact with the data in the time machine backup, it acts only on data which is on your disk and time machine picks this later on up.
The data you protect is stored in encrypted disk image time machine will back it up in that state so even on the backup disk, the data is protected.
But this happens all after you added the folder to Espionage, the data before that, also in the TM backups, is unprotected.
I hope this answers your question.

To create a new post, click on the new topic button in the upper left corner of the post list, but first select one forum i.e. Espionage 2 for example.

Rgds
Zsolt