[[!comment format=mdwn
 username="joey"
 subject="""comment 1"""
 date="2015-12-11T14:42:32Z"
 content="""
That's what's "special" about special remotes vs regular git remotes: They
only store the content of annexed files and not the git repository. Back up
the git repository separately (and your gpg key if it's being used, and the
credentials if you didn't use embedcreds=yes)

To use your backup, you can make a clone of the backed up git repository and
use `git annex enableremote` to enable it to use the special remote.

See [[design/encryption]] for details of how the encryption is implemented.
I've seen people follow that and manually use the data from the git repo to
decrypt files, but I don't have a pointer to an example at the moment.
"""]]
