Delta Trust

Delta Trust is a private vault for your backups, kept by Storage Studio, that only you can open. Backups are encrypted on your Mac before they leave it, and nothing on your Mac can delete what is already stored — not a program, not someone who takes over your Mac, and not us.

What it promises

The Delta Trust card states three promises:

• Only you can read it. Your backups are encrypted on this Mac with a key made from your recovery kit. Storage Studio never receives that key, so we cannot read your files.
• Ransomware can't destroy it. The access your Mac holds cannot delete anything. Your history can't be destroyed for a set number of days, by anyone, including Storage Studio. The card shows the exact number in force for your vault, and says nothing until our servers have confirmed it.
• Every version, restorable. Go back to any earlier version, any time.

There is a trade that makes the first promise true: if you lose both your recovery kit and your Mac, nobody can recover your backups.

What you need

Delta Trust needs a bought, active Storage Studio licence — a trial is not enough — and a Delta Trust plan. The card's main button always names your next step: Buy Storage Studio first, Get Delta Trust (shows the plans), or Set up my vault once a plan is paid for. A Delta Trust plan also includes Delta Drive, and the two share one amount of space.

Setting up your vault

%% caption: Creating a Delta Trust vault
flowchart TD
  A[Choose a plan] --> B[Set up my vault]
  B --> C[Your recovery kit appears: 24 words]
  C --> D[Print it or save the PDF]
  D --> E[Type three words back and tick the box]
  E --> F[Create my vault]
  F --> G[Your vault is ready]

The kit comes first, before anything is created, because a vault whose kit was never saved is a vault nobody can ever open. The screen also says where your vault will be stored. That can't be changed once the vault exists, so check it before you press Create my vault.

Using it

• Storage & restore shows how much space you have used, what is using it, and every version you can go back to. Restoring works like any other backup: pick the version, pick where it goes. See Restoring from a backup.
• Activity lists everything Storage Studio has done to your vault's account. We hold a service key so we can renew your Mac's access, pause the vault if there is a billing problem or unusual activity, and close it when you ask. Every use appears in this list.
• The i button opens About your vault, which explains in plain words what Storage Studio can and cannot do.
• On a new Mac, or after a repair, choose I have a recovery kit to reconnect to the same vault.

Your plan and billing

Your Delta Trust plan has its own card in Settings → License, below your Storage Studio subscription. It shows your plan, what it includes and how much you have stored, with Billing & invoices (your secure billing page, for invoices, your card and cancelling) and Change plan. See Billing & invoices.

If a Delta Trust payment doesn't go through, you see Payment didn't go through with a Fix Payment button, the same as for Storage Studio. If it stays unpaid, your vault first becomes read-only — you can still download and restore — and the notice tells you in advance the date anything else would change. Paying restores everything. See When a payment didn't go through.

Delta Trust or Delta Drive for a backup?

You can also point a backup at Delta Drive. It is encrypted the same way, but it sits beside your own files where it can be deleted. Delta Drive is a convenient place for a second copy; Delta Trust is the one built to survive something going badly wrong.

See also: Delta Trust, Delta Drive and My Drive, The recovery kit, Data Backup, Where a backup can go.