So, I’ve decided that I want to reinstall Arch on my laptop, but this time separate /home from root, and encrypt it using LUKS.
I made a backup of my current, unencrypted home directory (I didn’t separate them initially) using:
sudo rsync -aXS --exclude='/*/.gvfs' /home/. /mnt/home/.
Once I wipe Arch and reinstall it, encrypting /home, would I be able to transfer my unencrypted files to the encrypted /home partition, and have them become encrypted?
Yep.
Once an encrypted storage volume is mounted and in use, you just transfer stuff into and out of it like normal.
There’s nothing unusual about the files themselves.