Backing up 1Password accounts

Dave Creek

My parenthetical comment on the $5 price resulted in many of you focusing on that rather than the lack of a local backup capability which surprised me. So maybe all of you who disagreed with me on the two person price might also comment on that lack of a backup. (By the way, I've been a 1Password since its VERY beginning, and will use and support it as long as it and I exist.)

ozarkcanoer

Dave Creek,
re: backup

I'm using the Mac OS (10.11.6 currently) application 1Password 6. The items that are in my Families Personal Vault and Shared Vault are easily copied into my local client Primary vault which gets backed up by Time Machine and by my offsite backup via Crashplan.

It can also be exported to a local file or use the File/Backup command to create a backup file in /Users//Library/Application Support/1Password 4/Backups. That file can be copied where you choose. On my iMac that directory is also backed up by Time Machine and offsite by Crashplan.

Am I missing something regarding what you mean by a local backup?

Dave Creek

ozarkcanoer, thanks for the ideas. I have the much the same backup procedure as you: I backup daily to a local external drive and offsite to CrashPlan. ( I'm having Time Machine problems at the moment, but usually also there.)

I see now that I could export from my Shared Vault in the cloud to my Personal local vault. However, I can't find where that vault exists on my computer. On your computer where is it and what is its name? And where is File/Backup? I don't find it in 1Password.

Now, even I could do all that you say you're doing it seems to me to be less foolproof that the automatic backup I had with the old system.

ozarkcanoer

@Dave Creek
I don't know where my Primary vault is kept on my Mac but I do know that 1Password has been faithfully keeping automatic backups (of the Primary vault) going back months. The File/Backup command is in the 1Password6 File menu. (see attached screen grab).

Even though I don't know where or if the Primary vault is on my Mac, I know the Backups (controlled in 1Password 6 Preferences) are of the Primary vault because the number of items in my Primary is different than what is in my Personal vault.

The Primary vault began life as my 1Password database that was sync'd with other devices through Dropbox until we switched to Families.

Dave Creek

Maybe you are using a PC? I'm using a Mac with 1Pw version 6.5.2.

In my 1Pw File menu I see only New Item, New Login, Import..., Export... and Print. In my 1Pw Preferences window I see only General, Security, Accounts, Watchtower, All Vaults, and Browsers. In none of these can I find any reference to backups.

Without being able to see the 1Pw File on my computer I am a Doubting Thomas. Prior commenters have also seemed to me to indicate that that there is no such local backup file.

AGAlumB

My parenthetical comment on the $5 price resulted in many of you focusing on that rather than the lack of a local backup capability which surprised me. So maybe all of you who disagreed with me on the two person price might also comment on that lack of a backup. (By the way, I've been a 1Password since its VERY beginning, and will use and support it as long as it and I exist.)

@Dave Creek: That's a fair point. I'm sorry about that. Pretty much everything that we can say about this has already been said in this discussion though, so I didn't want to make you (or anyone else) read the same things yet again!

As mentioned previously, 1Password for Mac's internal database is stored in one of the following locations:

Mac App Store

~/Library/Containers/2BUA8C4S2C.com.agilebits.onepassword-osx-helper/Data/Library/Data/

AgileBits website

~/Library/Application Support/1Password 4/Data/

And if it's more convenient for you, you can use the Folder Sync feature to create a copy of the vault in the location of your choosing.

Or you can simply backup the backups of the local vault as ozarkcanoer mentioned (in the Backups subfolder of the locations enumerated above). But again, you'll only have these if you have a local vault. And you'll need to switch to it in order to interact with its specific features in the File menu, as in the screenshot.

In summary, 1Password.com vaults are backed up automatically on the server; local vaults are backed up automatically on the computer. Either way, 1Password is automatically backing up our data, but for my money the automatic redundancy (and, frankly, convenience) of the server backups is a dream come true. As a CrashPlan customer myself, this is what I'm paying extra for for the rest of my data; with 1Password.com it's included in my subscription, requires no configuration, and keeps my 1Password data secure no matter what happens to my computer.

c224

IMO, this thread will keep trailing with no end until an additional feature is added to the desktop app to export a copy with all of 1Password.com's vaults locally, even if it's buried as an advanced option in preferences.

Even though most do understand that 1Password.com's remote backup is most reliable and practically bulletproof, we simply want the extra option to do as we please with local backup files that we can easily move around—onto an external HD stored at mom's house, USB, LaserDisc, floppy disk, or even just exported onto their desktop with 800 other random icons. Who cares. The crowd here seems to be very tech savvy. As it has been mentioned, it doesn't hurt to have this added. Doing so would make us all very happy, and it'll push me over the hump to jump onto a subscription.

AGAlumB

Fair enough. Understandably, since there are backup measures in place (the likes of which I wish I had for all of my data without having to worry about it!) there are a lot of other things which are a higher priority right now. But we're definitely tracking the interest here for the future.

learning_1pw

I have been using the licensed version of 1Password for many years. Now I am considering moving to 1Passwd Families. It appears to me that much of the power of 1Password Families and Teams hinges on your servers. What do you do to protect against disaster at you server farms? Are they geographically distributed. What happens if Agilebits goes out of business or is bought out in a hostile take over?

rickfillion

Hi @learning_1pw,

Good question. We've been working on a document that we can publish that has those answers, but it's not ready yet. Let me see if I can pull out the important parts:

• We use Amazon Web Services, including their Aurora database
• Our database is replicated to another instance
• AWS creates snapshots of our database stored externally from the database server

We do want to provide some kind of local backup method for 1Password.com accounts. Mostly to protect against the last two things you mentioned : the future of our own company. We would feel a lot better if we provided you with that. We have some interesting ideas for how to do this securely.

I'd be happy to provide information on what data to backup locally to approximate the kind of backups you might be looking for.

Rick

learning_1pw

Thanks for your comments, Rick. I'm glad to hear that you have some solutions coming.

If you could provide more information on what to backup, that would be very helpful.

rickfillion

@learning_1pw : it'll depend on whether you're using the Mac App Store build of 1Password for Mac, or the AgileBits Store version.

For the Mac App Store version, you'd want to backup everything under ~/Library/Containers/2BUA8C4S2C.com.agilebits.onepassword-osx-helper/Data/Library/Data/

For the AgileBits Store version, you'd want to backup everything under ~/Library/Application Support/1Password 4/Data

This would include all items in the vaults that you have access to. It won't include Document file data though. Those are in the b5DownloadedResources directory, but only if you've explicitly opted to download the documents (there's no bulk download yet, we want to do better there).

I hope this helps.

Rick

learning_1pw

Thanks Rick.. That's very helpful.

rickfillion

You're very welcome. :)

Rick

ings

I'd like to +1 the need for a built-in local encrypted backup mechanism as "the last line of defence" should the AgileBits servers vanish for some reason.

Based on this thread it seems the best current option is to periodically manually copy everything from a Family vault to a local vault. I guess I know what I'm doing this weekend. :)

Dave Ings

Frank

Thank you for sending us over some additional feedback @ings :+1: We hear you and appreciate you taking the time to let us know this is important to you.

MacKopes

This thread hasn't been updated in a while, but I would +1 on this feature. To have an automatic local backup as a last line of defense. This is really the only thing keeping me from switching from local 1Password to subscription!

AK

Frank

Hi @MacKopes - Thank you for letting us know :wink: I'll make sure to share this with my team. With a 1Password.com account, you still have the option to export your data. The only issue, once the data leaves 1Password it's no longer encrypted. You can move the exported file over to an encrypted hard drive and store it in a safe location. It's not the best option at the moment but just a thought if you haven't considered it. :+1: Have a nice weekend!

MacKopes

Yep! I'm definitely aware of the export option.. And like you said it's not encrypted.. Nor is it 'set it and forget it'
Most of the previous comments expressed before sum it up.
But My 'ideal' workflow (in my opinion) should be like this:
1) Allow 'similar' automatic (but local) backups so they 'land' in say "Application Support" like they do now (Even better, let me specify if I'm doing local) These of course would be encrypted.
2) This allows me to have it local and also back it up (ironically) to the cloud to my preferred backup application (In my case Crashplan)
3) In this case, like others have said, I can have multiple recovery points totally un-reliant on the 1Password.com infrastructure. If something were to happen, I would have a local copy or even be able to recover multiple versions from my backup application provider. Then, as long as I had a local copy of the 1Password application, I should be able to get to my passwords.

I DO love that you have built in backups/version in the cloud as I think 'many' customers will be best served by this, but I do think a lot of our power users (Us paranoid ones :) would be much happier with the subscription model if this type of workflow could be enabled.

Keep up the great work and thanks for listening!
AK

Frank

Hi @MacKopes - Definitely valid points and I appreciate you taking the time to share your use case with me :smile: I'll definitely make sure to mention this to the team since it's an important feature to you. I appreciate the kinds words and thank you for stopping by to share this with me. I really do appreciate the feedback. Have a great weekend!

timbrisc

@rickfillion @Jacob Has anything changed regarding availability of backups across a team account? As has been discussed in this thread, we would like to maintain our own backups as part of a disaster recovery plan. I realize manual exports are an option but I'd like to have something for the entire team or at least available programmatically.

Frank

Hi @timbrisc - Thank you for checking in to ask. I don't have any new information to share with you at the moment. We're looking into it. Sorry for not having a better answer for you. I do appreciate you taking the time to let us know you would like to see this as 1Password Teams feature. I'll make sure to mention this to my team :smile: Have a great weekend and thank you for sharing.

rickfillion

@timbrisc : nothing has changed, but I do know that on my calendar this afternoon is a meeting to discuss this topic. It's definitely something that's on our minds.

Rick

rickfillion

(sorry for the late reply, I was on vacation)

rlh

I'm watching this thread with great interest. The lack of a local backup is one of the last items keeping me from signing up for a Families plan.

Frank

I'm glad your following the discussion @rlh :smile: We'll make sure update you here if we have any news to share :+1: I appreciate the interest and enjoy the rest of your day.