Data Backup

Data Backup keeps safe, restorable copies of the folders you care about — your Documents, a project folder, anything you choose. It's versioned and incremental: every time a file changes, Storage Studio saves a new point-in-time version, and nothing is ever overwritten in place. If you need last Tuesday's copy of a file — or a whole folder as it stood a month ago — it's still there to restore.

Where your backups go

Pick a destination once and Storage Studio takes it from there:

Another drive or folder — an external disk is ideal, especially

a fast SSD.

A connected cloud account — any account you've already added in

Data Transfers can be a backup destination.

If you're backing up to the cloud, Amazon S3, Backblaze B2 and Azure are the fastest choices. Google Drive, Dropbox and OneDrive work too, but those services deliberately slow down (throttle) large uploads, so a big backup takes noticeably longer there.

Each Mac keeps its backups in its own folder, named after the computer, so several Macs can safely share a single cloud account without stepping on each other.

Everything is encrypted

**Cloud backups are always encrypted on your Mac before anything is

uploaded. The cloud provider only ever sees scrambled data — never your actual files. You set a passphrase** once, the first time you back up to the cloud.

Backups to a local drive are encrypted automatically — there's

nothing to set up.

Keep your cloud passphrase safe. It's the only key to your cloud backups. If you lose it, those backups cannot be recovered — not by you and not by us. Write it down somewhere secure.

The passphrase belongs to the whole backup set: if you later change where your backups go, the passphrase stays the same. Changing the passphrase itself is a separate, deliberate action that asks you to type a confirmation, because a new passphrase can't read versions saved under the old one.

"That backup passphrase didn't match."

This means the passphrase saved on this Mac no longer unlocks that cloud backup — usually a mistyped passphrase during first setup. The warning always shows a Re-enter passphrase… button: type the passphrase the backup was actually encrypted with. Storage Studio then checks it live against your backup — you'll see "Checking… a cloud backup can take a minute" — and tells you right there in the dialog if it doesn't match, keeping the dialog open so you can try again. A passphrase is only saved once it's been confirmed to actually unlock the backup, so the correct one sticks. When it matches, Storage Studio reconnects to your existing versions without deleting anything. If the passphrase is genuinely lost it can't be recovered (the backup is encrypted with it), and the only option left is Delete & start fresh.

Storage Studio won't keep retrying a passphrase that didn't work. It stops and waits for you to re-enter the right one, so a single mistype never turns into a loop of failed attempts churning in the background.

And once a version has actually been saved to the destination, Storage Studio never mislabels it as a passphrase problem — even if the safety check that runs right afterward gets interrupted. It just shows the backup as saved and re-checks it on the next run.

It runs itself

Once a folder is set up, you don't have to remember to back it up:

Storage Studio watches the folder and quietly backs up changes as

they happen.

When you open the app it catches up — it finishes any backup that

was still in progress and captures anything that changed while the app wasn't running.

Backups are resumable. If one is interrupted — you close the lid,

lose Wi-Fi, quit the app — it simply continues from where it left off next time, and never re-sends data it already has. This survives a restart, and even a reinstall.

First backup vs. the ones after

Your first backup is the big one — it has to copy everything once. After that, each backup only sends what actually changed, so they're quick. Uploads run several at a time and are compressed to save space and time.

For a large first backup, an external SSD or Amazon S3 / Backblaze B2 will finish far sooner than Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive.

A first backup to a cloud destination (such as Google Drive) uploads your files as many small encrypted pieces, and the cloud adds a little delay to each one — so that first upload of a large folder can run for a long time, potentially hours. It is not stuck: it keeps working in the background and resumes exactly where it left off if it's interrupted, or if you quit and reopen the app. While that first upload runs, the backup set shows a clear notice explaining this, so you know it's making progress rather than frozen.

Restoring — versions and files

Click Versions… on any backed-up folder to see every version Storage Studio has kept. From there you can:

Restore a whole version — the folder exactly as it was at that

point in time.

Restore specific files — pick just what you need.

Either way, you choose where the restored copy lands, and Storage Studio never overwrites your current files — the restored items come back alongside what you already have.

Older versions are thinned out over time so your backup doesn't grow forever: recent changes are kept closely, then daily, then weekly, then monthly copies further back. A backup is only marked Protected once an integrity check has confirmed it can actually be restored.

Honest status, always

Each folder shows exactly where it stands, in plain English:

Not backed up — nothing saved yet.
Backing up… — a backup is running.
Checking… — verifying the backup is sound.
Protected — backed up and verified; you're covered.
Needs attention — something needs you. It explains what's wrong

and offers the fix.

Paused — backups are on hold until you resume them.

Delta X — Delta Trust, Delta Drive and My Drive

Delta X is the storage side of Storage Studio as a whole, and it is three things:

Delta Trust — your backups, on storage we run. Nothing on your Mac can delete or

overwrite what has already been backed up.

Delta Drive — your working files, on storage we run.
My Drive — the same working drive, on storage you already own.

Delta Drive and My Drive are one product with two backings, not two products. Same screens, same sidebar, same sharing, same disk in Finder, same site in a browser — what changes is whose bucket the files are in. One is live at a time on a Mac, and the heading says which.

Delta Trust is separate from both, deliberately. Your backups do not move when you change working drives, and a working drive is never a substitute for them.

The Delta Drive tab is always at the top of the main window. If you have a drive — including one you've switched off — it is your drive: it says Reading your drive… while it opens, and only calls a folder empty once it has looked. If you don't have one yet, it shows what Delta Drive does and three ways in: See plans, Use storage you own (My Drive on S3-compatible storage), or Restore it with your recovery kit.

My Drive needs only Storage Studio. An active Storage Studio trial or licence is enough — no Delta Trust, no Delta Drive plan. Setting it up sends an 8-digit code — to the email your Storage Studio licence or trial is registered to (a different address can't be used) — which works only on the Mac that asked for it. Use that address to open My Drive in a browser or set it up on another Mac. Buy a licence on that Mac later and the drive comes with you. We email you whenever another Mac is added — reply straight away if it wasn't you.

Set up My Drive in four steps.

In Storage Studio, open the Delta Drive tab and choose Use storage you own. (Already on

Delta Drive? Open Storage and choose Connect storage you own….)

Confirm your email with the 8-digit code we send — always to the email your Storage Studio

licence or trial is registered to. Enter it on the same Mac within 15 minutes. No code? Check your junk folder, then Send a new code.

Connect your storage — Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, DigitalOcean Spaces or any other

S3-compatible storage: the bucket, its region and a pair of access keys. We write a small test file and delete it again before anything is saved.

Use it — in the app, in Finder, and at storagestudio.us/drive, signed in with the address

from step 2. On another Mac, repeat steps 1–2 with the same address.

Switch drives. Open Delta Drive → Storage. Under Your drives you'll see Delta Drive (if your plan includes it) and each storage account you've connected — up to three — with the one in use marked. Press Switch to this beside the one you want. One drive is live on a Mac at a time and the heading says which. Switching copies no files and loses nothing: each drive keeps its own files, folders, search and settings, and your backups don't change. Disconnect stops using a drive without deleting anything; Reconnect brings it back. The Storage page on the web does the same.

Removing a drive of your own is on the ••• menu beside it, and each option asks first: Empty and set up again deletes what Storage Studio put there and recreates the starting folders; Remove our data and forget the key deletes what Storage Studio put there and forgets your keys, leaving the bucket and anything else in it; Destroy this drive also removes the bucket at your provider.

If your trial or licence ends, My Drive is paused, not removed: nothing in your storage is touched, but it can't be opened on the web and anything you shared is paused; on your Mac you can only disconnect or remove it. Reactivate and it carries on. After six months paused we forget the storage keys you gave us (with an email two weeks before) — never your files; reconnecting just asks for the keys again. Fair-use limits apply: up to 3 storage accounts, a cap on connection attempts per hour, and up to 50,000 files indexed per drive on a trial.

Sharing works on My Drive exactly as on Delta Drive, with or without Delta Trust. Each share belongs to the drive it was made on; if that drive is switched off, disconnected or paused, people you shared with see "This share isn't available right now" — never another drive's files.

Bought Delta Drive later? Storage Studio offers to move My Drive to Delta Drive (Delta Drive → Storage, on the Mac or the web). Your files stay in your own storage — nothing is copied — and your folders, notes, comments, favourites and shares carry over untouched; Delta Drive's own storage becomes available alongside it. Not now changes nothing.

Delta Trust and Delta Drive

Delta Trust is storage we run for you. It comes in two halves that share one amount of space:

Delta Trust — your backups. Nothing on your Mac can delete or overwrite what has

already been backed up, for a set number of days. Not a program, not someone who takes over your Mac, and not us. That is what makes it safe from ransomware: the protection cannot be waived by whoever is holding the keyboard.

Delta Drive — your working files, which you can add to, download, share and delete.

The two are kept apart on purpose. A backup you can delete is not a backup, and a drive you cannot delete from is not a drive.

Where a backup goes. On any backup card, the Destination menu lists Delta Trust and Delta Drive first, under Included with Storage Studio, because they come with your plan and need no account of your own. Below them are your own choices: a folder on a drive, or a cloud account you have already connected.

Backing up into Delta Drive. You can point a backup at Delta Drive instead of the vault. Storage Studio makes a folder called _Backup in your drive and keeps the versions there — encrypted the same way, opened by the same recovery kit. It is not the vault, and the difference matters: in Delta Trust nothing on your Mac can remove what has already been backed up, while the _Backup folder sits beside your own files and can be deleted like anything else you keep there. Delta Drive is the convenient second copy; Delta Trust is the one that survives something going badly wrong.

A second copy, somewhere else. Your vault lives with one storage company. Where the plan offers it, you can ask us to keep a second copy with a different company and pay for the space it uses. It survives the first company having a bad day — an outage, an account problem, a region going away. It is not a second vault (same encryption, same recovery kit), it does not add to the ransomware protection (that comes from the lock on the main copy), and it costs what storing the same bytes twice costs. The copy runs on our servers, so nothing is uploaded twice from your connection. Turning it off stops the charge and stops new writes; it does not delete what is already there.

Your recovery kit. Setting up prints 24 words that are the only way into your vault. Keep them somewhere safe and away from that Mac. We cannot look them up, reset them, or recover them for you — the same fact that keeps your backups readable only by you.

Using storage you own. (No plan needed for this — see Set up My Drive in four steps, above.) Delta Drive is included with your plan and needs nothing set up. If you would rather keep your working files on storage you already pay for, Storage → Connect storage you own… points the drive at an S3-compatible bucket — Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, DigitalOcean Spaces, Backblaze B2, E2E, or a server of your own. You give it a bucket, a region and a pair of keys; we write a small test file and delete it again before saving anything, so a refusal is a real one and tells you what your provider said. Your keys are stored encrypted and are never shown back to you.

We only ever read and write under one prefix inside the bucket you name, so anything else in it is untouched — and removing the drive only ever deletes inside that prefix.

The two drives share nothing. Whichever drive is live has its own files, its own index, its own Recent, Analytics and Activity, its own linked folders, its own retention settings and its own local cache on each Mac. Switching between them moves no data and loses nothing: the other drive's contents stay exactly where they are, and switching back finds everything as you left it, with nothing to set up again.

What is different on your own storage. It is yours, which is the point and also the trade-off. Anything holding your keys can delete it — including you, by mistake. It is not protected the way Delta Trust is: Delta Trust holds a credential you do not have, which is exactly why nothing on your Mac can erase it. Keep using Delta Trust for the copy that has to survive a bad day. Old copies of a file are kept only if you have versioning switched on at your provider — the Versions screen reads that setting and tells you which it found, because it changes what they bill you and is not ours to turn on.

Switching it off. Storage → Disconnect puts the drive to sleep without deleting anything: the bucket keeps its name, the index keeps its rows, your folder settings and retention rules stay, and the keys are left where they are. While it is off, no screen lists or downloads anything and no background work touches it. Reconnecting needs nothing set up again.

In a browser, you can look at either one. The web has a Viewing picker at the top of the sidebar. Which drive your Mac is using and which one you are reading in a browser are separate choices — you can read Delta Drive on the web while your Mac writes to your own bucket. The picker marks whichever one your Mac is using.

Three ways in, all the same files. The Delta Drive window on your Mac, Finder — where the drive appears like a disk — and any browser, signed in with the email address your licence was issued to (for My Drive, the address you confirmed when you set it up). There is no password: we send a one-time code that works once and lasts fifteen minutes.

The screens. The sidebar is the same list on your Mac and on the web: My Drive, Recent, Shared, Search, Index & notes, Analytics, Trash, Activity, Versions and Copies — plus Security, on the web, where two-step sign-in lives. On your Mac the menu bar's More (•••) → Delta-X opens any of them directly.

The folders you start with. Every drive begins with Documents, Desktop, Pictures, Shared and Team. The first three match folders your Mac already has, which is what makes keeping a copy of them one click. These five cannot be removed — they are what your backups and shares point at — but everything inside them is yours to delete, and Empty this folder… clears the contents and leaves the folder.

Keeping a folder from your Mac here. Open Documents, Desktop or Pictures in Delta Drive and, while it is empty, it offers Keep a copy of my Documents here (the same switch is on the folder's right-click menu and on the Copies screen). Nothing is copied until you press it; after that the copy is kept up to date, and turning it off leaves what is already there.

Link Folders. Connect any folder on your Mac to a folder in your drive — Add ▸ Link a folder… — and choose how it is kept:

Available online only — the files live in Delta Drive. Your Mac keeps only what it needs

to list them, so they take no space here and open from any browser.

Available offline only — the files stay on your Mac and are never uploaded. Delta

Drive shows their names, sizes and dates so you can see what is there from anywhere; the contents are reachable only while that Mac is on.

Both, in sync — a full copy in both places. Uses the space twice, and survives either

one going away.

Change the mode at any time from the folder's menu or the Copies screen. Nothing is deleted on either side when you change it or unlink it. It only ever goes one way — deleting something on your Mac does not delete it from the drive.

Browsing. Three views (Icons, List, Details — Details with sortable column headings), a Sort by menu covering Name, Kind, Size and Date modified, a clickable breadcrumb trail, and a folder tree that slides up from the bottom. Folders always sort first. Search looks through everything Storage Studio has seen on this drive — names, kinds, sizes and dates only; we never read inside your files to build it.

Badges on each row say where an item actually is: Online only, Ready to read (a copy is here from when you last opened it, and will be tidied away), Always on this Mac (kept on purpose, works with no network), plus marks for shared, versioned, linked and commented.

Opening a file opens it in the app that owns it and saves your changes straight back — Save a copy… is there when you want a detached copy instead. An edit never overwrites a newer copy: if the file changed somewhere else while you had it open, your version is saved beside it under a name that says where it came from, and you are told.

Putting things in and taking them out. Add ▸ Files… / Folders…, New folder, and — in a browser — dragging things in from your desktop. Uploads keep going when you close the window, go in pieces so a dropped connection carries on, and show their own progress and speed. Rename, move, copy and Move to Trash are on the right-click menu; the background of a folder has its own menu about that folder. Removing something moves it to the trash, where Put back returns it to exactly where it was. Nothing in the trash expires on its own.

Index & notes. Everything on your drive in one grid, with the actions on the rows. Lenses narrow it: Largest files, Duplicates (byte-for-byte identical contents, proven matches only), Orphaned (nothing changed in over a year — a date, not a judgement), No note yet, Has a note. A note is a short private label you write on a file or folder; it is searched alongside names, and nobody you share with ever sees one.

Recent. Signing in on the web opens Recent, and the Delta Drive window on your Mac has the same screen. It asks one of three questions, and Recent by chooses which: Added (what arrived), Updated (what changed — something added last year and edited this morning belongs here, not under Added), and Opened (what was last opened or downloaded, including by anyone you have shared it with). Nothing about an opened file has to have changed, which is why the other two miss it — and if you have sent somebody a file and want to know whether they have looked at it, this is the screen that says so.

Narrow it by kind, by how recently, or by name; sort by date, name, size or kind either way round; and on your Mac draw it as icons, a list, or details with all three dates side by side. Folders are never in the list: a folder's date changes whenever anything inside it does, so they would sit at the top permanently and tell you nothing.

Versions, and how long. Two settings, not one. Keep old versions decides whether a folder's history is kept at all; how long they're kept is Forever, a number of months, or until a date. Both are inherited from the folder above, and the screen says which folder a setting came from. A folder can be set shorter than the one it sits in, never longer — the longer options are simply not offered, with a line saying why. Three months is the shortest we offer; a year is the longest fixed window.

The Versions screen shows how many old copies exist, the space they use, how far back they go, and which files are holding the history. Shortening the window is a decision to delete something, so it tells you what would go and roughly how much space that frees before you save. The current copy of every file always stays. If your history has never been counted the screen says so rather than reporting zero, and Count them now counts it on the spot.

Analytics. What each half of your plan holds, what your old copies use, what you have moved in and out over 7 days, 30 days, 90 days or a year, and how much of your plan that adds up to. Charts read out every line when you hover a day. Underneath: where the space is by folder, your largest files, what nobody has opened, files with identical contents and what keeping one of each would give back, and what has not changed in a year — dates and facts, not judgements. Every row leads somewhere. The figures come from a measurement taken once a day, so the charts fill in as the days pass; history cannot be worked out backwards.

Activity. Everything done in your drive, newest first — sign-ins that worked and ones that did not, folders opened, files added, downloaded and binned, notes written, shares created and withdrawn. Each row says roughly where the request came from: we record the country and city, never the address itself.

Copies. How many copies of your data exist, and where. How big your main copy is and how many days it is locked for, whether a second copy is on, and every folder from your Mac that is being kept in Delta Drive — the built-in ones and every Link Folder — with what is true of each right now and a Copy now for any of them. It ends with the sentence people get wrong: a folder kept in Delta Drive is a real second copy and it sits beside your own files, so you can delete it. Delta Trust is the one nothing on your Mac can touch.

Favourites. Right-click anything and choose Add to favourites to pin it to the sidebar; favourites belong to the drive rather than to one browser, and follow the file if you move or rename it.

Right-clicking empty space. The background of a folder has its own menu, about the folder you are in rather than about a selection: create a folder, add files, paste, select everything, refresh, share it, comment on it, how long its old versions are kept, and its details.

Dragging. Drag a file or folder onto another folder to move it, hold ⌥ Option to copy instead, and drop onto the breadcrumb trail to move something up a level. Dragging files in from your desktop still uploads them.

Sharing. Share a file from Delta Drive with the people you name — only those addresses — and choose how long it lasts: 1 day, 7 days, 30 days or 90 days. Every share expires on its own; there is no "forever", and no link that shows your files to whoever finds it. The people you name sign in with a code emailed to them, which creates no account and no password; the code works once and lasts fifteen minutes. Throwaway addresses are refused as you create the share, naming the address. You can see who opened a share and what they downloaded, and withdraw it at any moment — anyone signed in stops immediately.

What they can do. Five levels, set for everybody on a share or for one person: Read (open and download), Comment (and leave comments), Read / Write (add, rename, move and bin things inside what you shared — anything binned goes to your trash, not theirs), Reshare (pass it on), and Owner, which only becomes available once that person has actually opened the share. Read / Write and above all include commenting.

Under Permissions on a share, each person's own row starts at Same as the share, so raising the share raises everyone you never singled out; set one specifically — higher or lower — and that sticks. Somebody passing a share on can never make it wider than what they were given: never more than the item they hold, never a higher level than their own, and never past the day your share ends. A share somebody passed on appears in your list, marked with who made it, and you can withdraw it like any other.

What they see. A real Delta Drive containing only your share: folders they can walk into, icons, list and details views, sorting, search inside the share, a details panel, and uploads when you allowed them. They never see where the files sit in your drive — a share of "Clients/Acme/2026 Audit" appears to them as "2026 Audit", with nothing above it. Everything anybody has shared with that address arrives in one place, a folder per person, so they sign in once and find it all together.

What a recipient never sees: your notes, your version settings, your favourites, your trash, who else you shared it with, and whether you keep a file on one of your Macs. Anything they bin goes into your trash, which they cannot reach.

Comments. A conversation attached to a file, visible to everyone who can see that file, with reactions and timestamps. A comment cannot be edited once posted — you withdraw it, and the thread says so where it was. You can withdraw your own; as the owner of the file you can withdraw any comment on it. Six reactions are available, and hovering one says who reacted. Notes are a different thing and stay private — nobody you share with ever sees one. The owner of a file can export its comments to Word, with who said what, when, and who reacted.

How much lives on your Mac. Three answers, changed at any time: Always keep on this Mac (chosen per folder — a real copy, kept up to date, works with no network), Keep a copy while I'm using it (a file you open stays for a while — a day up to ninety — then goes), or Online only (nothing kept, every file fetched when you open it). "Free up space now" clears the kept copies without touching the drive itself. The same menu holds Refresh what's shown and Rebuild my storage…, which makes anything missing at your storage provider and reconnects your Mac to it — it adds what is not there, leaves what is, and never deletes a backup.

Plan and billing live in Settings → License, beside your Storage Studio subscription.