Frequently asked questions

Vault Buddy helps you track who owns and who physically holds your hard drives — with loans, returns, and a tamper-evident chain of custody so you always know where a drive has been.

Open the Drives page and click Add Drive. Got a lot of them? Import a whole list from a spreadsheet instead (see below).

1. Open the Drives page and click Add Drive.
2. Select Import from spreadsheet and drag your CSV or Excel file onto the upload area — or click to browse for it.
3. Map your columns to drive fields. Vault Buddy auto-detects common column names so most of the mapping is already done.
4. Preview the list. Duplicate serial numbers are flagged automatically so you can decide how to handle them.
5. Click Import.

Vault Buddy has two kinds of workspace. Free & Pro is a single workspace for one person or company — production companies, DITs, photographers, or individuals tracking their own drives. Team is a shared workspace for larger studios, post houses, productions, or IT teams, with roles, shared drive visibility, and signature requirements.

You can switch between your own workspace and any team you belong to at any time.

Ownership is whose drive it is — that never changes when you loan it out. Custody is who physically holds it right now, and it updates with every hand-off.

Every time a drive changes hands, Vault Buddy records it in an unbroken, append-only history. That trail is the chain of custody — it can't be edited after the fact, only added to.

You can view it on any drive's detail page under the Chain of Custody tab. Each entry shows who held the drive, when the hand-off happened, and (if signatures are enabled) the captured signature image.

Yes. Use Locations (like an office, home, or vault) to record where drives are stored. Locations are typically places you control, but you can use them however you like.

Usually you do not have to do anything: if you set Owned by to someone you are connected to, they are asked whether to take ownership automatically. To offer a drive to someone who is not its named owner, open the drive from the Drives page and click the transfer (⇄) icon at the bottom-right of its details (on mobile it's under the ··· menu), then choose Offer ownership. Either way they must be one of your connections.

They're asked to accept. Nothing moves until they do, and the drive stays yours if they decline.

Tick I'll keep the drive if the drive stays on your shelf. Accepting then records a loan back to you, so the chain of custody never claims they're holding a drive they've never seen.

Yes. When you add a drive, set Owned by to the client. The record stays on your account, so you still manage it, snapshot it, loan it and report on it. Vault Buddy now knows the drive is theirs, and says so on the drive list, in the drive details and in the drive report.

If that client has an account and you are connected, they are also asked whether to take ownership of the record, and it appears under Awaiting your confirmation on their drives page. Nothing moves unless they accept, and declining leaves the drive yours and still attributed to them.

No. An owner is one of your contacts, the same list you loan drives to. They never have to sign up. If they do join and connect with you later, everything already attributed to them is offered then, so nothing has to be chased up by hand.

If the contact has an email address, we email them the list of drives you track for them, with an invitation to connect. It goes out a few minutes after you set the owner (so adding several drives at once is one email, not several), and if you add more later they get at most one update a day listing everything, with the new drives marked. Someone who never signs up is emailed a few times at most. You can send the current list again any time with Resend invitation on the contact in Connections. A contact with no email address is a private label for your own records and nothing is sent.

Vault Buddy tracks three separate things:

• Owned by is whose drive it is. This can be a client with no account.
• Managed by is whose Vault Buddy account the record lives on. That is you.
• Held by is who physically has it right now.

A drive can be owned by Acme Films, managed by you, and held by you, all at once. That is the normal state for a drive on your shelf.

Yes. Select the drives on the Drives page and choose Set owner. Setting an owner moves nothing. The drives stay on your account and custody does not change.

Yes. The drive is on your account, so it uses one of your slots. The free plan covers 10 drives, and Pro removes the limit.

On accept, the record becomes theirs and it counts against their drive limit. On decline, nothing moves. Ownership and custody stay exactly where they are, and the drive is still attributed to them.

No. A pending offer costs them nothing. The drive only counts once they accept. If they are at their limit they can upgrade, or decline some drives and accept others.

Once they have an account and you're connected, they can see the drives you've attributed to them: identity, snapshots, and the chain of custody. It is read-only and free, and it uses none of their drive slots.

Seeing is not managing: the drives stay yours to snapshot, loan and report on. They can only manage a drive after they accept the ownership offer that attributing it to them creates.

No. The QR code points at the drive's Buddy ID, which never changes. Existing labels keep working through attribution, an offer, and a completed transfer.

Snapshots travel with the drive. The new owner gets every indexed file list and the full chain of custody.

Cloud thumbnails and stills travel too. They stay attached to the drive and stop counting against your storage allowance the moment ownership moves, so you are no longer using space on a drive you no longer own.

Copies on your Mac stay on your Mac. The desktop app keeps its own thumbnail library locally, and hi-res stills and any masters you chose to keep are local only. Those stay with you.

One thing to watch: if the new owner is on the free plan, inherited thumbnails may put them over their storage allowance.

Yes. Pick a contact from the same workspace as the drive. A team drive uses your team contacts and a personal drive uses your personal ones, so the two never mix.

There are several ways to loan a drive — all of them record the hand-off in the chain of custody:

• One at a time — open a drive from the Drives page and choose Loan, then pick who's taking it.
• In bulk — on the Drives page, click the Loan out (↗) shortcut next to the search bar (or just tick the drives you want), then confirm Loan out in the action bar that appears. The Return shortcut beside it works the same way for bringing drives back.
• Drag & drop — on the Connections page, drag a drive straight onto a connection to loan it to them.
• With the QR scanner — scan one or more labeled drives to check them out in a single batch.

However you start, you choose the recipient (a team member, a connection, or a contact), set an optional return date, and capture a signature if one's required.

There are two permissions you can grant a borrower: Drive Snapshots (they can view and create snapshots of the drive) and Edit Drive Details (they can rename the drive and update its info).

You can set your defaults once in Account settings → Default Loan Permissions — those values pre-fill every loan automatically. You can still override them for any individual loan in the loan modal before confirming.

On a Team account, the defaults live in your Team settings instead of Account settings — the same two toggles apply, and they can also be overridden per-loan. Team accounts have an additional layer: owners and admins can set per-member permissions directly on the Team page (view snapshots, create snapshots, edit drive details, add connections). These govern what team members can do inside the team workspace, independently of any loan.

Requiring signatures is a Team-plan feature: team owners and admins can make a signature mandatory on every loan. It's captured right as the drive changes hands and stored privately.

Signatures are linked to the specific custody event — they appear in the Chain of Custody tab on the drive's detail page and are included in chain-of-custody reports.

Set a return date when you loan a drive. If that date passes without a return, the drive shows an Overdue badge.

You're always in control of your own drives. As the owner you can mark a drive returned at any time, once it's physically back in your hands.

You can also request a return — a nudge asking the borrower to physically send the drive back. The loan stays open until you confirm you've actually received it. Both the request and the final return are written to the chain of custody.

Yes. Open the drive from the Drives page — below the drive name you'll see "with [name]" with a small arrow. Click that to reassign the loan to a different recipient: a team member, connection, or contact.

The drive moves directly to the new holder without an intermediate return. The chain of custody records both the end of the old loan and the start of the new one.

QR check-in and check-out let you loan or return several drives at once by scanning their labels instead of opening each drive individually. To use it, your drives first need QR labels — create and print them from QR Studio in the sidebar.

Once your drives are labeled, open the QR scanner from the Drives page and choose Check out (to loan) or Check in (to return). Scan each drive, pick a recipient, and confirm — all the hand-offs are recorded in a single batch.

Yes. If your drives already carry their own QR codes or barcodes — asset tags, factory serials, or labels from another system — the scanner can read those too, so you don't have to relabel anything.

1. Open the drive (or add it) and enter the value your label encodes into the Custom ID field — the same number or code the barcode/QR shows. The Manufacturer serial field is matched as well.
2. Save the drive.
3. Open the QR scanner and scan your label like any Vault Buddy code — it matches to that drive and drops straight into the basket.

A couple of things to know: the code has to be saved on the drive first, or the scan won't find a match. If two drives share the same Custom ID, the scanner asks which one you meant. Your own Vault Buddy QR labels keep working exactly as before.

A connection links you with another Vault Buddy user or team so you can loan drives to each other.

1. Go to the Connections page and click Add Connection.
2. Enter the person's name and email address, then click Add Connection to send the request.
3. They'll get a notification to accept. Once they do, the connection is active and you can loan drives to each other.

If they don't have a Vault Buddy account yet, they'll receive an email inviting them to create one. The connection activates as soon as they sign up and accept.

A connection is another Vault Buddy account. A contact is just a name and email for someone *without* an account — useful as a loan recipient when the other person isn't on Vault Buddy.

You'll get a notification in the notification panel in the sidebar and a prompt on the Drives page. You have two options:

• Accept — confirms you physically have the drive. Custody updates to you and the hand-off is recorded in the chain of custody.
• Deny — confirms you never received it. The drive reverts to the sender and the denial is recorded in the chain of custody.

Until you act, the loan shows as Pending Receipt. The owner can see this state on their end too.

A snapshot is a point-in-time index of a drive's files and folders — a searchable record of what was on it. By default it captures only metadata (names, sizes, folder structure).

No. Snapshots record only file metadata — names, sizes, and folder structure. Vault Buddy never reads or stores the contents of your files.

Snapshots use the File System Access API — a browser feature that lets Vault Buddy read your drive directly without uploading anything. Only Chrome and Edge on desktop support it. Safari, Firefox, and all mobile browsers do not support this API, so the snapshot button is hidden or disabled in those environments.

If the button isn't responding in Chrome or Edge, make sure Vault Buddy is open as a top-level tab — not inside an embedded browser, iframe, or app webview — and try again.

Yes — every snapshot has a searchable file tree, so you can find a file by name without re-scanning the drive.

This almost always means a subfolder was selected instead of the root of the drive. When the directory picker opens, navigate to the top level of the drive itself before clicking Select — not into any folder inside it.

After you choose a folder, Vault Buddy now shows you the folder name before scanning starts. If it looks like a subfolder (e.g. "Documents" or "Projects") rather than a drive name, click Change to re-pick.

A chain-of-custody report is a signed PDF covering your drives' full history. It has up to three sections: the custody timeline (every hand-off, timestamped), a drive inventory (what you own and who holds it), and an access log.

On a Pro account — go to Account settings and click the Chain of Custody Reports tab. This generates a report covering all your personal drives.

On a Team account — go to the Team page and click the Custody Reports tab. This generates a report covering all drives in your team. Team owners with an active Pro subscription also see the Chain of Custody Reports tab in their personal Account settings.

Each report is fingerprinted with a SHA-256 hash the moment it's generated. To verify a PDF later, go to Account settings → Chain of Custody Reports (or Team page → Custody Reports for team reports) and click Verify Integrity. Drag your PDF onto the drop zone — or click to browse — and Vault Buddy checks the file's fingerprint against its records. A match confirms the PDF is bit-for-bit identical to what was originally generated.

QR labels are printable stickers you attach to your drives; scanning one instantly pulls the drive up for check-in and check-out. Create them on the QR Labels page — a four-step wizard: Select drives → Choose format → Design label → Generate.

In the Design label step you choose which fields appear. The drive name and QR code are always included. Optional fields are: capacity, brand & model, owner name, owner phone, owner email, owner address, and project / job name. You can also add your logo. Save your setup as a template to reuse it across batches.

We recommend the DYMO LabelWriter 550 Turbo — with DYMO Connect installed, Vault Buddy prints to it in a single click, no print dialog. Brother QL-series printers are fully supported too (the QL-800 is a popular choice), but they print the exact-size label through your computer print dialog after you install the printer driver. The sizes below fit everything from portable SSDs to 3.5" drives and RAID chassis, plus durable poly and clear-film labels for drives that travel.

Sheet labels — PDF download

• Avery 5160 — 1" × 2⅝" · 30 labels per sheet
• Avery 5163 — 2" × 4" · 10 labels per sheet

DYMO thermal rolls

• DYMO 30252 — 1⅛" × 3½" · DYMO LabelWriter 450, 550, 5XL
• DYMO 30334 — 2¼" × 1¼" · DYMO LabelWriter 450, 550 · asset tag
• DYMO 30336 — 1" × 2⅛" · DYMO LabelWriter 450, 550 · fits portable SSDs
• DYMO 30256 — 2 5⁄16" × 4" · DYMO LabelWriter 450, 550, 5XL · fits 3.5" HDD / RAID
• DYMO LW Durable 1" × 2⅛" — 25mm × 54mm · DYMO LabelWriter 550, 5XL · poly, water & scuff resistant

Brother thermal rolls

• Brother DK-1201 — 29mm × 90mm · Brother QL-series
• Brother DK-1209 — 29mm × 62mm · Brother QL-series · small asset tag
• Brother DK-1204 — 17mm × 54mm · Brother QL-series · fits portable SSDs
• Brother DK-1202 — 62mm × 100mm · Brother QL-series · fits 3.5" HDD / RAID
• Brother DK-2113 — 62mm continuous · Brother QL-800 / 810 / 820 · clear film, durable

The one-click print button requires DYMO Connect to be installed and running on your computer. If it's not installed, Vault Buddy falls back to PDF automatically.

1. Download and install DYMO Connect if you haven't already.
2. Make sure DYMO Connect is running — it should appear in your system tray (Windows) or menu bar (Mac).
3. Reload the QR Labels page. The one-click button will appear once Vault Buddy detects the software.

Note: Chrome requires a one-time permission to allow Vault Buddy to reach your local DYMO device. If prompted, click Allow in the browser bar.

• Check the label roll is loaded correctly and matches the size selected in Vault Buddy. A size mismatch causes the printer to pause or skip.
• Confirm DYMO Connect is still running — it can quit silently after a system sleep. Relaunch it from your Applications folder, then reload the page.
• Try the PDF fallback to rule out a Vault Buddy issue: click the PDF tab and print from there. If the PDF prints correctly, the issue is between DYMO Connect and your printer.
• Check for a paper jam or low-label warning on the printer itself — DYMO Connect won't report these to the browser.

Brother QL printers don't auto-detect label size from the browser — you need to match the roll loaded in your printer to the format selected in Vault Buddy.

1. In Vault Buddy, check which Brother format you selected (e.g. DK-1201, DK-1204).
2. Confirm that exact roll is loaded in your printer.
3. When the print dialog opens, select your Brother QL printer, set the paper size to match, and set the scale to 100% — do not use Fit to Page.

If you're unsure which roll to use, the format picker in Vault Buddy lists the compatible roll number next to each size.

This is almost always a print dialog setting. When the print dialog opens, find the scale or sizing option and set it to Actual Size (sometimes labelled "100%" or "No scaling"). Do not use Fit to Page — it shrinks the label to the paper margins and throws off the dimensions.

Also confirm the paper size in the dialog matches the label stock loaded in your printer.

Every drive can have a public web page at a short URL — the one encoded in its QR label. When it's on, a finder who scans the label or visits the URL sees a "Found this drive?" page with the recovery contact you've set, so they can get it back to you. If you turn the public page off, finders see only a minimal confirmation with no details.

Manage all of this on QR Labels → Public URL Settings (set the recovery name, email, and phone; team drives use the team's public contact).

• Free — $0/mo. For individuals just getting started. Track up to 10 of your own drives, and receive unlimited drives that others share or loan to you.
• Pro — $19/mo. For power users and growing collections. Everything in Free, plus unlimited drives and chain-of-custody & compliance reports.
• Team — $49/mo. For studios, productions, and IT teams. Everything in Pro, plus up to 15 members, role-based access, shared drive visibility across the team, and the option to require signatures on loans. Includes 3 members; add more at $12/seat.

Yes — cancel the Team plan and subscribe to Pro from Account settings → Billing & Subscription. However, your Team and personal workspaces are entirely separate, so a few things don't carry over:

• Team drives stay in the team workspace and won't automatically move to your personal account. You can export them as a spreadsheet and re-import them manually.
• Connections made through your team account are not shared with your personal account.
• Chain-of-custody history stays in the team workspace. It's viewable during the 30-day frozen window after cancellation, but won't appear in your personal Pro account.

All team records are permanently retained — you can always resubscribe to access them again.

Upgrades are prorated. When you upgrade mid-cycle (Free → Pro, or adding team seats), you only pay the difference for the time left in your current billing period; your next invoice returns to the normal rate.

Every team gets a 30-day free trial. When it ends, the team owner needs an active Team subscription to keep team access — otherwise the team is frozen until they subscribe.

A team freezes when its trial or subscription lapses. Your drives stay safe but are locked until the owner subscribes again — and you can still switch to your own workspace in the meantime.

Go to Account settings → Billing & Subscription, choose the Pro plan, and click Have a promo code? above the card form. Enter the code and press Apply. A valid code gives you 30, 60 or 90 days of Pro free. You add a card, but nothing is charged today.

When the free period ends, Pro continues at the normal price and your card is charged then. We email you a week before, and your Account page shows how many free days are left. Cancel any time before the end date and you won't be charged at all.

Codes work once per account, when you start a new Pro subscription. If you already have an active plan, a code can't be applied on top of it.

Go to Account settings → Billing & Subscription and click Manage Billing to open the secure billing portal, where you can update your card, view invoices, and change your plan.

Go to Account settings → Billing & Subscription and cancel directly from that page, or click Manage Billing to do it through the billing portal. Either way, you keep your paid features until the end of the current billing period — nothing cuts off immediately.

After the period ends, your account returns to the Free plan (10-drive limit). Your drives and custody history are never deleted.

Step 1 — Subscribe to the Team plan. Open Account settings → Billing & Subscription and click the Team plan tile. You'll be taken through a brief setup flow: give your team a name, optionally move some of your personal drives into the team, and confirm. Your team is created as soon as the subscription activates.

Step 2 — Invite members. Go to the Team page and click Add member (top-right). Enter the person's email address, choose their role (Admin or Member), and click Send invite. They'll get an email with a link to accept. If they don't have a Vault Buddy account yet, the invite email walks them through creating one.

Invited members appear in the People tab with a pending status until they accept. Once active, they can see and interact with team drives according to their role.

• Owner — full control of the team; can't be removed. Can transfer ownership to another member from Team Settings.
• Admin — manage members and permissions, and edit drive details.
• Member — access the drives shared with them.

A Team plan includes 3 members. Add more seats for $12/member, up to 15 members total.

1. Open the Team page and scroll to the Danger Zone at the bottom.
2. Click Transfer Ownership.
3. Choose an active team member to become the new owner (they can't already own another team).
4. Confirm with your password.

The outgoing owner's paid period becomes a grace window while the new owner sets up their own billing.

1. Open the Team page and scroll to the Danger Zone.
2. Click Dissolve Team.
3. Confirm with your password.

The team enters a 30-day grace period during which you can restore it; team drives move back to your own workspace and members lose team access. After 30 days it's permanent.

Change your password in Account settings → Security: enter your current password, then your new one. Change your email from the same Security area — we send confirmation links to both your old and new addresses, and the change takes effect once confirmed.

(If you signed in with Google, your email is managed by Google.)

Two-factor authentication (2FA) adds a second step to signing in: a 6-digit code from an authenticator app on your phone. Turn it on in Account settings → Security → Two-factor authentication. Scan the QR code with any authenticator app (Apple Passwords, 1Password, Google Authenticator, and others all work), enter the code it shows, and you're set. On a Mac, open the Passwords app, pick the vaultbuddy.co entry, choose Set Up Verification Code, and either scan the QR on screen or paste the setup key from the can't-scan link.

When you turn it on we show you 10 recovery codes. Save them somewhere safe, like a password manager. Each works once and gets you back in if you lose your phone. You can regenerate them from the same place at any time.

It applies to the website and the desktop app. Turning it off asks for a current code from your app.

On the sign-in code screen, choose Lost your authenticator? Use a recovery code and enter one of the recovery codes you saved. That signs you in and turns two-factor authentication off, so set it up again from Account settings → Security once you have a new device.

If you have no recovery codes left, email hello@vaultbuddy.co from the address on your account and we'll verify it's you and reset it.

Open Account settings and scroll to the Delete Account panel at the very bottom of the page. Before you can request deletion, a few things must be resolved:

• Return any drives you have loaned out to connections.
• Have all drives returned from team members (if you own a team).
• Transfer or dissolve your team.
• Cancel any active subscription.

Once those are cleared, you get a 30-day grace period to undo the deletion by signing back in. After 30 days your personal details are permanently removed.

The custody history is kept permanently so the audit trail stays intact and verifiable. Your personal details are scrubbed, but the chain of custody remains.

Signatures are stored privately and only shown through secure, signed links — never public URLs. We don't expose your data publicly unless you choose to turn on a drive's public page.

Loaned drives appear on your Drives page under the Shared with me section. If you still can't see it, the most likely cause is a workspace mismatch — check which workspace you're in (personal vs. team) using the switcher in the bottom-left of the sidebar. A drive loaned to you through a team connection will only appear in that team's workspace.

The scanner needs camera permission. If you previously denied it, your browser won't ask again automatically — you have to re-enable it in settings. When permission is blocked, Vault Buddy shows the exact steps for your browser directly in the scanner. The general pattern is:

1. Click the lock (or tune) icon to the left of the address bar.
2. Click Site settings (Chrome/Edge) or Website Settings (Safari).
3. Set Camera to Allow.
4. Reload the page and open the scanner again.

On iOS, camera permission is managed by the operating system, not the browser. If the scanner is blocked on iPhone or iPad, go to Settings → [your browser] → Camera and turn it on, then reload. Note that the QR scanner is not supported in mobile browsers — use the dedicated mobile app scanner instead.

If your device has no camera at all (some desktop setups), the scanner will show a "No camera detected" message. In that case, use manual check-in by entering the Drive Buddy ID directly.

A few things to check:

1. Light and distance. Hold the label 15–30 cm from the camera in good light. Avoid glare directly on the label.
2. "That drive isn't in your account" — you're in the wrong workspace. A team drive won't scan in your personal context and vice versa. Switch workspaces using the switcher in the bottom-left of the sidebar and try again.
3. "No drive with that code exists" — the drive may have been deleted, or the label belongs to a different account.
4. Damaged label. Vault Buddy QR labels use error correction level L, which can recover from roughly 7% data loss — a light scratch or minor scuff is usually fine. Heavy wear, deep scratches, or a peeling label likely won't scan. The three square corner markers are the most critical part; damage there will kill the scan fastest. Reprint from QR Studio if a label is badly worn.
5. Low-resolution camera. Older webcams (such as the original Apple iSight, which tops out at 640×480) don't have enough resolution to reliably read small QR labels. Try a phone camera or a newer webcam instead.

If the camera feed is black or never appears, see The QR scanner shows a black screen above.

That's the particle privacy filter — an intentional effect that replaces the live camera feed with a motion-reactive particle overlay. It obscures what the camera sees so the feed doesn't look like a surveillance camera, while the QR scanner still works underneath.

If you'd rather see the raw camera feed, click the [icon:Grip] particle filter toggle in the bottom-left of the scanner to turn it off. The setting is remembered per device.

How did you know to ask? Press the S key three times (quickly) anywhere in Vault Buddy to play Snake. Your high score saves to your account, and there's a global leaderboard shared across all Vault Buddy users — so you're playing for bragging rights against everyone. 🐍