Recovery kit or backup file?

Two files, two questions

When people hear "export a file from my vault," they often assume one file does everything.

NT² intentionally separates two jobs:

Both are encrypted. Neither gives NT² your master password or plaintext. Both stay under your control. But they are not interchangeable.

Recovery kit: access, not archive

A recovery kit is for threshold vault access when you are on a device that does not yet have your usual unlock path.

Think of the moment after a laptop swap, a browser reset, or travel with a secondary device. You still know your master password, and you saved a recovery kit separately—but this device does not have your day-to-day unlock factors yet.

The recovery kit helps you unlock. It is not meant to be your whole vault archive, your monthly export habit, or the file you email to a family member "just in case."

Good recovery hygiene looks like:

• export a fresh kit after a master password change;
• store it separately from the password itself;
• treat it like a spare key, not like a content backup.

If you use a threshold vault, the recovery kit is part of how user-held recovery stays possible without NT² resetting your password. That story is broader in Threshold Vault and Key DID.

Backup: contents, not just unlock

A .nt2backup file is an encrypted snapshot of vault contents for migration or disaster recovery.

Use it when you need to:

• move records to a new device with the full vault;
• keep an offline copy of what you stored;
• restore after device loss when you still have the backup and your master password.

A backup is about what is inside the vault, not only whether you can open the vault on a cold device. It is the escape hatch described in Escape hatch, not lock-in—your encrypted archive in your hands, cloud optional.

Pick the right one under stress

The mistake usually happens when someone says, "I exported something—why can't I find my items?" or "I backed up everything—why can't I unlock on this new laptop?"

Under stress, the fix is a simple decision tree:

1. Need to open the vault on a cold device? Start with recovery kit + master password.
2. Need to move or restore the records themselves? Start with .nt2backup + master password.
3. Changed your master password recently? Export a new recovery kit; old kits stop working for the new password.

Neither file replaces the other. Together they express the same product value: your vault should be recoverable without asking NT² to become you.

Learn more in the guides at nt2.me/guides/recovery-kit and nt2.me/guides/backup-export-import, or follow the RSS feed.