What to copy, where it goes, and an email you will still be able to find in ten years.
You rarely want everything. Pick what fits the job.
| Backup | Contains | Size | Use it for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recovery kit | Guardian pieces, device identity | Tiny | Printing. Locker, lawyer, fireproof box. |
| Passwords | Every password, code and note. No documents. | A few MB | The routine one. Downloads in seconds. |
| Passwords + chosen documents | Above, plus what you pick | Your choice | The sensible monthly habit. |
| Everything | The complete vault and all documents | Up to your card size | Moving to a replacement device. |
For the third, you can filter by person, folder, label, date, or simply skip anything larger than a size you choose. The device shows you the total before it starts, so you never begin a huge job by accident.
Anything up to about 25MB downloads straight to your computer. A full copy of a large card would take most of a day over the device, so instead it writes the backup onto the memory card itself. You then take the card out, put it in your computer, and copy that one file at card-reader speed. Less elegant, considerably faster.
The card is an ordinary disk, so your computer will open it quite happily. What it will find is a folder of files it cannot read a word of, and your backup sitting alongside them. Copying works; opening does not.
Because the card is an ordinary disk, anyone holding it can see how many documents you have, how big each one is, and when it was added. They cannot see what any of them are or read a single word. If that outline alone is sensitive, keep the card in the device.
A backup is the one thing that turns your vault into a file somebody could carry away, so it is the most carefully guarded action on the device.
| Backing up | What it takes |
|---|---|
| Just your own things | Your passphrase again, and a press |
| The whole family vault | Your passphrase, a three-second hold, and a second adult's approval |
When the whole vault is backed up, every profile is told the next time they unlock — what was taken, when, and by whom. Nobody quietly walks off with the family's records. This is a social protection rather than a technical one, and in a shared vault that is exactly the kind that works.
If you have given the device your home Wi-Fi, it can email you an encrypted backup roughly every three months. The difficulty with email backups is never security. It is that nobody can find the message in 2034, so we give the whole chain a name.
The device has no battery. Sitting in a drawer it is switched off completely, with no clock and no way to reach your Wi-Fi. So it cannot wake up on a schedule and send you anything.
What actually happens: the next time you plug it in and unlock it, if more than ninety days have passed, it offers to send the backup. One tap. The readiness screen shows you how overdue you are.
This also means a long gap between emails tells you nothing on its own, because the device being unplugged is its normal state. Use the readiness screen for that, not your inbox.
If the words that unlock the backup arrived in the same inbox as the backup itself, the encryption would be decorative — anyone getting into that email account would have both halves, findable by the very phrase we taught you to search for. So the backups go to your inbox and the words stay on the card in your locker. Keep them apart. That separation is the protection.
Because the device cannot chase you, pick a moment you will remember anyway. Plug it in when you file your taxes, or on a birthday. Four times a year is ideal; twice is far better than never.
Your backup file can be opened in any web browser using a small open-source page we publish, with no device and no company involved. Download it from vault.bendflex.in, keep a copy with your recovery words, and your data outlives us. We think you should not have to take that on trust, so we made it checkable.
BendFlex · VaultPlug Guardian · Owner's Manual v1