Bjarne Verschorre

The Differences

• Asymetric, is stronger than symetric but slower
• Symetric allows you to use different passphrases PER file and is quicker
• Encrypted Archive like 7zip allows you to archive, compress and encrypt everything
• VeraCrypt allows you to create a container and encrypted partitions
• LUKS allows you to encrypt a partition

Cloud Storage

For cloudstorage I’d recommend using 7zip or something the like. It allows you to reduce the size which saves on bandwith, upload and download time and storage space which is limited in the cloud.

You can easily use a different password per file/folder.

7z a -mhe=on -mx9 -p images.7z images/

Local Encryption

There are some key differences between VC/LUKS and 7zip.

With something that is archived (and compressed) you’d need to extract the files you want/need to use and delete them afterwards.

Using something like a VC container or an encrypted partition allows you to decrypt, use and encrypt.

So if you’re just saving some files and not activily using them, archive and encrypt them. If you need to search the data, use some files or something among those lines, use a container or partition.

A container is more portable but a partition is more usefull since it doesn’t rely on your OS. If you lose access to your OS, you won’t be able to access your container directly, with a different partition you don’t have this problem.