Enc FS - Advantages

Advantages

EncFS offers several advantages over other disk encryption software simply because each file is stored individually as an encrypted file somewhere else in the host's directory tree.

  • EncFS "volumes" do not occupy a fixed size — they grow and shrink as more files are added to or removed from the mountpoint.
  • It is possible for some directories on the mountpoint to exist on different physical devices, if a filesystem is mounted over one of the subdirectories in the source directory.
  • Backup utilities can back up only the files that have changed in the source directory.
  • Corruption of data is more isolated. Data corruption of filedata is local to a single file and data corruption of the filesystem can be corrected with a reliable filesystem repair utility like fsck. In some whole-disk encryption systems, one or both of these attributes are not present.
  • Since file modifications shine through to the underlying file system, various optimizations by the operating system are still possible unlike with full disk encryption. For example, passing information about released space (TRIM) can improve performance of SSD drives.

Read more about this topic:  Enc FS

Famous quotes containing the word advantages:

    “When the manipulations of childhood are a little larceny, they may grow and change with the child into qualities useful and admire in the grown-up world. When they are the futile struggle for love and concern and protection, they may become the warped and ruthless machinations of adults who seek in the advantages of power what they could never win as children.”
    —Leontine Young (20th century)

    “We work harder than ever, and I cannot see the advantages in cooperative living.”
    —Lydia Arnold, U.S. commune supervisor (of the North American Phalanx, Red Bank, New Jersey, 1843- 1855)

    “Can you conceive what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing as that “we, the people,” should mean women as well as men; that our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?”
    —Mary F. Eastman, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4 ch. 5, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)