Are there any advantages with including 1Password vault data in my machine backups?

aVLqYBMTJXl

One of the reasons I like Roboform (my current password manager) and 1Password 4 is the password data is stored in files that can easily be included in my machine backups (using Crashplan) and then restored if lost. As I'm evaluating 1Pasword 6 and a personal account, my initial thought is to do the same except I haven't been able to figure out where the data is stored. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder I'm just too paranoid.

Since my data would be stored on all my devices and online, wiping one device (aka reinstalling Windows on the laptop) wouldn't cause a problem getting the data back to that machine. But let's go worst scenario, even it it is unlikely. Let's say I have 1Password on my phone and laptop and everything is all synced up and then 1Password or me gets hacked (or a well-targeted asteroid hits your data center) and the data online gets wiped. What happens next? Would I be able to restore my data from any of my devices and push that data back to the online account? What if they all sync too quickly and erase all the local data? Would it be possible to restore that data from the machine backups then sync it back online?

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1Password Version: 6.0.161.u
Extension Version: 4.5.8
OS Version: Windows 10
Sync Type: Personal account

MikeT

Hi @aVLqYBMTJXl,

You can find the local database file here: %LOCALAPPDATA%\1Password\20160514.sqlite

When it comes to 1Password.com, the way it works is different from your traditional standalone 1Password programs. First, the truth or the source is always our server, not your local file. The apps that are signed in to 1Password.com are basically the thin clients that does what the server tells it to do, the apps do keep a local cache but the data that is always the latest is on the server. This resolves a lot of the issues such as sync conflicts, complicated sync setup and so on, the server will handle all of this for you and in addition, we back up the data as well. We do not store all of them in one place, we do replicate the data for redundancy purposes.

For people who are used to dealing with their own backup files, this is a huge change and for a few, this won't be acceptable. You can export the data into a secure disk image (export is not yet implemented in 1Password 6 Beta). We are trying to figure out a way for you to have encrypted backups but the reason this isn't in right now is that we have security in place to prevent others from using your old backups against you. Imagine you've changed your password because you believe you may have gotten compromised but then, you must delete all of your old backups in various places since these backups are encrypted with the old password and is now your weakest point.