...and I've made a feature suggestion to Google for it. Here it is. Issue 36793. Basically, what I'm suggesting is a drive mounting service that will allow you to connect to cloud services, remote shares, and local drives (SD cards, zip drives, ect.). These would then be accessable to apps through the use of standard google APIs. This would mean you could potentially save your angry birds game to your dropbox if rovio programed in the ability. What is more, they would just program in the connection to the google service. Through that, you would select the specific drive. This would mean that apps would no longer have to program could service/drive specific integration. I could use something besides dropbox for my YNAB app (I'm guessing most don't get the reference).
Anyway, here's a link to my writeup on google.
https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=36793
Related
Mods: Sorry if this thread was posted in the wrong sub-forum, I didn't realize till I was done typing that I was asking a question! Please move to Q&A if it belongs there.
One of the major features I was looking forward to with my new Razr Maxx HD was finally being able to have device encryption similar to what I had with my Blackberry. That's one thing BB really nailed on the head. Today, I finally get around to set up encryption on my phone and I contacted Motorola to ask a few questions. I asked about how to copy files to a PC and what happens with the data on the SD card if the device breaks. The agents reply?
"I do recommend that you don't encrypt your device. Just do the normal process."
I asked her about several scenarios and was told every time that there is no way to copy files from the device to a computer and no way to guarantee that the files will be retrievable even with regular use of the encryption feature that they falsely represent in sales tactics as "government grade encryption" for the device. They use the term to try and sell the phone to serious business people like me, then tell me that they advise against using it at all because the data on the phone may never be able to be retrieved if something happens to the phone. Not to mention that there is no way to copy the files to a PC if you want to do regular backups. I was the one who asked about the possibility of just emailing important files form the phone to myself or uploading them to dropbox, she couldn't even recommend that on her own. All in all, it's a very pathetic situation.
So, what I'm wondering is. Is there anyone who uses device encryption? Have you figured out any way to get around the issue of being unable to backup your files to a PC? I really want to use encryption, I've been missing it for over two years since I switched from BB. I'm not a top secret FBI agent or anything, but I do feel more secure with my personal and business information encrypted. What I'm thinking is, set up Titanium Backup to do a scheduled sync to Dropbox. I haven't done that before, but I think Titanium will do that. This should cover pretty much anything on the phone itself. Now, what I am wondering, is there something similar to Titanium Backup that can backup contents of the SD card to the cloud? I already have Dropsnap uploading my photos to Dropbox, so those are safe, but I would like to backup the rest of my data from the SD card too. Seems any way the phone can send the files to a server would basically be a good way to backup data in an unencrypted state. I just don't know of any solution for that for the SD card.
This is a very disappointing thing about the encryption, I'm hoping someone here has some ideas!
gadsden,
One app that I am fond of for transferring any type of file from my phone to the cloud is FolderSync. It can sync any type of file to the more popular cloud services (Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, etc.), and it has a lot of additional functionality such as move files around on your phone (internal storage to SD, SD to cloud, cloud to SD, etc.), instant syncs, scheduled syncs, widgets for syncing on demand, and more.
It's just under $3, but it's well worth the functionality it brings and it may be what you are looking for. Definitely worth a look at regardless.
madkel said:
gadsden,
One app that I am fond of for transferring any type of file from my phone to the cloud is FolderSync. It can sync any type of file to the more popular cloud services (Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, etc.), and it has a lot of additional functionality such as move files around on your phone (internal storage to SD, SD to cloud, cloud to SD, etc.), instant syncs, scheduled syncs, widgets for syncing on demand, and more.
It's just under $3, but it's well worth the functionality it brings and it may be what you are looking for. Definitely worth a look at regardless.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool, that seems like it will do exactly what I want. I'm definitely going to give it a try, thanks!
Hi there,
We are in a new era of Cloud Internet technology... But the question comes could we utilize the full cloud service thoroughly?
-I don't think so!
For example, Google Drive provides us 15GB of free cloud space, but to make use of that 15GB we end up transacting of the Data usage around 50GB+
How?
Uploading contents on Google Drive = 15GB +
Browsing/Surfing 5GB extra, so 20GB.
Downloading the same contents multiple times on multiple devices = More 30GB of internet data usage!
So we are virtually requiring round about 50GB of internet data pack additionally which is kinda costly in India yet!
It would have come down to half if we could have saved the data directly on Google Drive or any other relevant Cloud Media like Drop box, Sky Drive etc without having it to get downloaded onto the PC/Smart phone/Tablet!
Currently the respected UC Browser only seems to be providing the said feature flawlessly without any limitation in file size or extension but on UC's own Cloud a storage of 2GB Fixed & 4GB Temporary!
Other browsers like: Maxthon, Puffin etc might do the same job but kind of limitations are there!
A dedicated website ctrlq.org/save/ does the job for various Cloud media but can't be compared with UC Browser in any/every aspect.
Months/Year ago Google launched Save to GDrive Button which gives the Web Admin only to implicate the feature where Users don't have choice to do so!
gutenberg org did implicate this feature enabling users to send their desired Epub file to GDrive (and Dropbox as well) directly so that they can import into Google Play Books or download afterwards.
It's worth mentioning that not every website would be willing to implement the GDrive button for visitors to save direct to cloud!
Hence we are left with only an option of opting the UC Browser.
My request to all the readers over here, is there any alternatives for this? Is it not really possible to create such application or plugin which will pop up with option of choosing download destination (Storage or Cloud) when we tap on download button!
May/may not be possible yet till today but sure enough in future we will be able to do so what UC had already done long way before.
Any opinion/suggestion or users point of view is highly appreciated!
Sad
It's very haert broken fact that no one ever bothered to answer the query! Seems the feature was asked about is kinda crime!
Shame on all of u guys...
I want automatic, end-to-end encrypted backup to the cloud of any file(s) from my device with the ability to access them from my PC as well. (My Android device is already encrypted, and my PC is using whole disk encryption. I'm also doing encrypted TitaniumBackup's to the external SD card.)
I love FolderSync and have been using its automation rules to sync my data to DropBox. But I'm worried that my files are stored in DropBox and anyone who hacks them (or subpoenas them, though I'm more worried about hackers) will have access. So now that I want cloud encryption at rest, I see two potential options.
The first is a product called BoxCryptor that layers cross-platform client-side encryption onto DropBox. But I haven't downloaded it to play with and am not clear from the documentation if files can be modified and uploaded via their Android app or only accessed for reading. Further, to integrate BoxCryptor with my FolderSync setup would likely require some extra steps like a local copy to a "synced" folder first, and it seems like it could prove tricky or cumbersome.
So, I'm going with the second option, which is switching to the Amazon S3 cloud. FolderSync already supports S3 client side encryption, so I just need to do a few steps:
1) Create an access key in S3 with read/write permissions only for a new bucket I will create for my Android backup.
2) Add this new S3 account to FolderSync.
3) Modify my FolderSync synchronization rules to use the new S3 account.
VOILA! I will have my files encrypted at rest on my Android device, automatically backed up to S3 after client-side encryption, and then accessible from my PC via an S3 download tool like S3Fox. The only thing I think I will lose is the fancy autosync to PC that the DropBox client provides. But I figure if I search more I can likely find a similar S3 client for windows.
Any thoughts, suggestions, improvements?
Dearth of software supporting S3 client side encryption
So, I've been researching further, and it is a bit more complicated than I expected. I found that there appears to be very little out-of-the-box software that supports S3 client-side encryption.
The Android app FolderSync does (rather surprisingly, though it is labeled "experimental" in the release notes), but for the PC there is very little software that can decrypt client-side encrypted objects in S3. The s3cmd command line tool from s3tools.org does support it, so that may be what I use to sync to my PC. S3Fox certainly doesn't. I don't want to have the files only accessible from my Android.
Many tools support server-side encryption (which still uses keys you manage yourself and seems relatively secure), but since FolderSync doesn't support that, it doesn't help.
I found this page[1], which describes a hidden folder in Google Drive that is used by apps to store hidden data that other apps cannot access. How can I access this data myself? If there is no official way to do this (which seems likely), how about an unofficial way? I'm okay if such a method requires a rooted device, such as to get keys or something from an app's data. (Perhaps there's an Xposed module that can intercept these API calls to obtain the required authentication data in a universal manner?)
The reason I don't think there's an official way is because of this page[2] about the Saved Games API, namely this part:
Read/Write isolation
All Saved Games are stored in your players' Google Drive Application Data Folder. This folder can only be read and written by your game - it cannot be viewed or modified by other developers’ games, so there is additional protection against data corruption. In addition, Saved Games are insulated from direct tampering by players so they cannot modify individual Saved Games.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd like to be able to "tamper" (as Google calls it) with that save data anyway, as it's my own save data after all. Most likely this method would let me access that as well.
Could someone point me in the right direction please? Thank you!
Links:
(Since I haven't made 10 posts yet, it won't let me post external links. It says this is to prevent spam, so considering I'm not spamming, I assume this workaround won't be against the rules, as my use of links isn't the type it's aimed at preventing.)
[1] bit.ly/1GmjZOY
[2] bit.ly/1NLJKdU
Backing up camera photos, messenger pics, contacts, documents etc. to Windows in their original format.
Smartphone: unrooted Mate9 with Android 8
What I used to do:
Connect my previous phone (rooted Ascend Mate) to Windows via USB, it's SD card got connected as a real mass storage device. I then ran a custom robocopy batch routine that backed up/mirrored all the important things to my computer. I folder mounted everything interesting from the internal memory to the SD card, like messenger pics.
This worked really great.
Problem I have now:
My new Mate9 does not support true USB mass storage connection anymore. It only supports this awful pseudo MTP file transfer connection to Windows.
This makes robocopy unusable because it only works with real drives with an assigned letters of course.
I really don't know what to do now.
Any cloud backup solution is not an option for me, because of sensitive data and slow internet. Full phone backups feel like an overkill and I cannot access the files on the computer directly.
I know that some people run a samba server or something on their phones to turn the storage into NAS drives. (Robocopy supports NAS I think) This seems to be maximum overkill and difficult to setup and resource intense but I'm interested if its the only way.
Any tips? Thank you
Don't know much about Windows, or MPT for that matter, but perhaps you could map your device (folders you need) to a letter drive? If I recall correctly, that mapping will allow you to read the files located on the MPT drive.
This is acually possible. I found a commercial software that lets you map a driver letter to an MTP device but it's $40.
Did some more research and getting a drive letter for Android storage over WiFi is acually stupidly easy.
Just install WebDav Server on Android and click the button. Then on Windows Explorer -> Map Network Driver and enter the IP displayed on Android. Thats literally it.
I only hope that I can get two drive letters for internal and external storage. Need to try.
So I found a complete solution that I'm VERY happy with!
Its running two WebDAV servers on Androind, one for accessing the internal storage and one for the sd card. This allows me to map 2 network drives in Windows and that means robocopy magic!
Here is how I did it:
1. Install the free app WebDAV Server Ultimate. This app allows you to run multiple servers at once AND let you specify custom storage paths. Both things that the other popular app WebDAV Server can't do!
2. Create two new servers in the app with the plus button and specify the according storage paths. Also make sure these two servers use different ports. The name can be specified freely. Click on the play button to start the servers.
3. Open the Windows Explorer and click "Map network drive" in the top bar. A new window pops up: Pick a drive letter you want and enter the Network IP of your smartphone and the port under "Folder" like this example sceme: \\192.168.178.01:8080 Also check the box "Reconect at logon" if you want the drives to still be there after a restart. The your current phone IP can be viewed in the WebDAV app when you klick on the info icon.
Thats it basically. After that you have your internal storage and sd card mapped to driveletters in Windows over WiFi. Just write your robocopy routine and do one click backups You can check "Keep the device fully alive" in the WebDAV app settings which helped stability and might improve speed. I got about 4-5 MB/s which isn't fast but fast enough for me.
One more thing:
If you use Windows 7 and you want to transfer files bigger 50 MB you have to do this registry workaround by Microsoft. For security reasons, Windows 7 limits WebDAV filetransfers at 50 MB by default.
Doomkeks said:
So I found a complete solution that I'm VERY happy with!.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good stuff, I'd consider making a how-to thread in your devices forum for others!