--- title: "Delta Trust" url: https://storagestudio.us/wiki/delta-trust category: "Delta Drive, Delta Trust & My Drive" tags: ["delta trust", "backups", "recovery kit", "restore"] summary: "Delta Trust is a private vault for your backups, kept by Storage Studio. Backups are encrypted on your Mac before they leave it, nothing on your Mac can delete your history, and you can go back to any earlier version." updated: 2026-10-01T12:54:25.000Z --- # Delta Trust Delta Trust is a private vault for your backups, kept by Storage Studio. Backups are encrypted on your Mac before they leave it, nothing on your Mac can delete your history, and you can go back to any earlier version. **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](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-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](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/delta-drive), and the two share one amount of space. ## Setting up your vault ```mermaid %% 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] ``` *Flowchart — Creating a Delta Trust vault. Outline:* - Choose a plan - leads to Set up my vault - Set up my vault - leads to Your recovery kit appears: 24 words - Your recovery kit appears: 24 words - leads to Print it or save the PDF - Print it or save the PDF - leads to Type three words back and tick the box - Type three words back and tick the box - leads to Create my vault - Create my vault - leads to 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](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/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](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/billing-and-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](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/fix-payment). ## 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. - **Can I move my iPhone backups to an external drive on a Mac?** Yes. Finder has no setting for where it keeps iPhone and iPad backups, but Storage Studio can move them to your external drive from What's Using Space: it copies them, checks every file arrived, and only then frees the space on your Mac. Finder keeps backing up to the drive afterwards, so keep… (https://storagestudio.us/faq) - **What is purgeable space on a Mac and how do I clear it?** Purgeable space is storage macOS is holding — old snapshots, cached cloud files, optimised media — that it frees automatically when you need room, which is why "free" space can look smaller than expected. Storage Studio reclaims a lot of it on demand instead of making you wait. (https://storagestudio.us/faq) - **How do I reclaim space from local Time Machine snapshots on a Mac?** macOS keeps point-in-time APFS local snapshots so Time Machine can restore even when your backup drive is away — useful, but they can hold a lot of space. Storage Studio lists every snapshot, shows which are already safely backed up, and reclaims the space you choose in one click. (https://storagestudio.us/faq) See also: [Delta Trust, Delta Drive and My Drive](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/delta-trust-delta-drive-and-my-drive), [The recovery kit](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-recovery-kit), [Data Backup](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/data-backup), [Where a backup can go](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/backup-destinations). ## What links here - [Backup speed, battery and the network](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/backup-speed-and-power) - [Delta Drive](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/delta-drive) - [Delta Trust, Delta Drive and My Drive](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/delta-trust-delta-drive-and-my-drive) - [My Drive](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/my-drive) - [The free trial](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-free-trial) - [The recovery kit](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/the-recovery-kit) - [Where a backup can go](https://storagestudio.us/wiki/backup-destinations)