I was just reading this document and it says
Each chunk is then broken up and key value pairs are added to a table on the users computer called a data map.
As I understand it, without the data map you won’t be able to find all the different chunks of your file, and it will be impossible to re-assemble.
If this data map is only stored locally, wouldn’t it be very easy to lose access to all of your files if it gets corrupt or deleted?
Yes. The data map is treated as any other piece of data within the network and is processed through the self encryption process before being stored as encrypted chunks across the network.
its encrypted locally through the self encryption process and like nick said treated like all other data and stored across the network. Your credentials are the only thing that will be able to retrieve your data map, nothing else and as long as you don’t keep your passwords laying around, no one else can retrieve your data. I think you’ll be quite interested when you get to how you access the network with your password and how even a very weak or generic password is actually made to still be secure. It’s all very clever
I should really make a diagram of how user data is stored on the network, it comes up often enough.