Can I clone PGP encrypted drive A->B and then later B->A? Will drive A work?
I run Acronis® True Image Home® version 10.0 (build 4,942).
Every Sunday I clone my work laptop drive to an external drive for backup purposes (A->B).
Occasionally I need to restore my laptop drive (clone external drive to laptop drive, B->A).
Now my company has directed that I need to use PGP to do whole disk encryption.
Will my current backup/restore process continue to work?
Has anyone done this successfully?
Thanks.
Claude

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Thanks for the feedback Oleg.
From what I understand running a decrypt of the hard drive can take quite a bit of time (250GB drive) so I would rather not add that time to the 3 hours it currently takes to clone the drive.
Based on your reply I have to assume that 'clone drive' is not the same as 'sector-by-sector' mode.
When I follow the link you provided for doing a sector-by-sector backup I see the following statement:
In Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 you can also create the raw image by
ticking off the Back up sector-by-sector checkbox when specifying disks
or volumes to back up.
I run Acronis® True Image Home® version 10.0 (build 4,942) and do not see any such option when I select the backup option.
Am I running a version that does not include this option?
BTW, I always boot from the Acronis boot CD I created so that I capture the whole system while Windows is down.
Thanks for your input.
Claude
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The Sector-by-Sector option did not appear until either TI2010 (TI2009 maybe???).
In other versions, TI might automatically revert to sector-by-sector mode if it can't make sense of the disk structure but I wouldn't rely on it happening reliably.
Sector-by-sector mode backs up every sector in the partition so if you have a very large partition the archive will be very large as well and this also means it will take a lot of time.
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Hello all,
Thank you for posting.
Claude,
If your partition or hard drive is encrypted by PGP, Acronis Bootable Media of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home will create sector-by-sector backup automatically.
I would like to add, that sector-by-sector mode doesn't allow to resize the destination partition during the recovery.
Seekforever,
Thank you for your help.
Please do not hesitate to ask additional questions if the provided information is not clear or you need a further assistance.
Thank you.
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Thanks Oleg,
I still have not seen any posts here or on any thread that equate the "clone" function of Acronis to sector-by-sector backup. Can you tell me if they are two names for the same process? Clone is the option on the GUI along with Backup and Restore. I know that backup and restore create the proprietary copy of the drive and I under stand that I will not be able to use these options after my hard drive is encrypted by PGP.
Also, in your second sentence you mention that sector-by-sector does not allow resizing the destination partition. In the past I have used the Clone function to move from a 40GB drive to an 80GB drive and from a 120GB to 250GB. Does that mean that clone is not sector-by-sector or did I misunderstand that statement.
Thanks,
Claude
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Hello Claude,
Thank you for posting your questions.
The operations are different.
If you back up in sector-by-sector mode, then every sector of the hard disk is saved into a uncompressed file, the image file will be of the same size as the disk being imaged.
When you use the Disk Clone tool, you effectively copy/move all of the contents of one hard disk drive onto another hard disk drive. This function allows you to transfer all the information (including the operating system and installed programs) from a small hard disk drive to a large one.
If the provided information is not clear or if you have any other questions do not hesitate to post them and we will be glad to answer.
Thank you.
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Oleg,
If I understand correctly:
1) clone and sector-by-sector backups are not the same.
2) But if I try to clone a PGP encrypted drive/partition it will do sector-by-sector backup when I use TI 10 Home bootable media.
3) The version of Acronis I am running does not have a user selectable sector-by-sector option
I arrived at #2 above from this statement earlier in the thread:
If your partition or hard drive is encrypted by PGP, Acronis Bootable Media
of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home will create sector-by-sector backup automatically.
Thanks for you patience in helping me understand. I put full faith in the backups I create and want to be sure I have a sound backup.
Claude
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Claude wrote:...I arrived at #2 above from this statement earlier in the thread:
If your partition or hard drive is encrypted by PGP, Acronis Bootable Media
of Acronis True Image 10.0 Home will create sector-by-sector backup automatically.Thanks for you patience in helping me understand. I put full faith in the backups I create and want to be sure I have a sound backup.
Claude
It creates a sector-by-sector backup because it cannot make sense out of the structure.
If you are going to have full faith in this procedure, you must test it fully which means making the copy, restoring or installing the disk with the copy on it and then making sure that PGP is still happy and you can access your information. Some encryption programs will detect that the information is not on the same drive or has been moved in some manner and will not permit access.
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Thanks for you clarification Seekforever. Like one interpretation of your handle, I'm constantly seeking to understand how things work. Is there somewhere I can read up on the differences between a clone backup versus a sector by sector backup?
As for your recommendation to test, that is already in the plans with multiple drives just to be absolutely sure.
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The only documentation for TI is in their help file, knowledge base or on this forum.
I never do a clone, I always image even if I do a new HD installation so I have little direct experience with it.
What I "think" I know:
TI when imaging and cloning does not necessarily copy a sector back into its original address when doing the write to the target. It puts the sectors on the drive and then adjusts the file system as necessary to reflect the revised locations. This is why it supports only certain file systems - it has to understand them to do the adjustments.
The sector-by-sector mode which used to be available only as an unaccessible mechanism invoked when TI couldn't make sense of the file system for any reason such as unsupported or damaged became a command in TI2010. This appears to copy sector ABCD by to location ABCD on the target drive without any interpretation of the file system. This also means that it copies the entire partition because it has no idea where anything exists in the partition.
It seems to me that cloning when the partitions sizes on the target are not identical to those on the original requires an understanding of the file system structure. The interesting thing about cloning is this paragraph from the TI2009 User Guide:
As a rule, "as is" transfers are not recommended as they leave much unallocated space on
the new disk. Using the "as is" method, Acronis True Image Home transfers unsupported
and damaged file systems.
The last sentence indicates that doing a clone with "As Is" selected may do a sector-by-sector copy of the data. I emphasize "may"!!!! You could try it if you really want to clone. It would be interesting to see the relative times to do the job with the As Is clone vs a sector-by-sector backup/restore.
Perhaps some other user or Acronis will give their views of the above.
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I want to complete this thread.
I am running Acronis® True Image Home® version 10.0 (build 4,942)
I have a laptop with PGP WDE
I boot the laptop from the Acronis bootable image with a USB drive connected (to hold the backup image)
I select the Clone option and the laptop drive as source and USB drive as destination.
Once the other options have been selected just before it starts it states that it will be doing a sector-by-sector copy.
I did a backup and then restored that backup image back onto the laptop and everything works as desired.
Acronis obviously determines during the cloning setup process that it needs to use sector-by-sector mode. Prior to applying WDE to my laptop drive I never saw the 'sector-by-sector copy' being used.
Thanks for your comments helping explain some of these details.
Claude
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