TIB 2017 WinPE with Bitlocker external hard drive

Hi Andrew - I would submit in app feedback for this one and reference this thread.  Also, probably wouldn't hurt to reach out to technical support to make sure it's documented that way as well.  I'm going to keep recommending that anyone using 2017, take advantage of the new technical support policy that includes 1 year.  

1) If the service is not good, hopefully all of our use of it will force it to get better

2) If the service is good, hopefully it will get fixed during the call

3) It's included now so let's take advantage of it.

I don't have any bitlockered drives so I won't be of any additional assistnace for this particular issue - does sound like whatever was fixed previously, may need to be re-worked into 2017.  Just curios, but once it's unlocked, can you navigate the contents of the drive in WinPE OK, or does it prompt you to format the drive?  If it is truly unlocked, you should be able to navigate everything in WinPE just fine.

For the time being, could you not just use your 2016 WinPE recovery disk, but continue to use 2017 in the OS?  

Thanks Bobbo,

I just started a chat support session with tech support and they're going to research the issue further and email me with more information.

Once I unlock the drive in winpe I can navigate through the files and folders and open files without any problems in winpe.

For right now I'm doing exactly as you suggested and using my True Image 2016 WinPE usb drive while I wait for the 2017 to get updated to work properly!

Glad to hear you have a work-a-round for the time being.  

One more thought... what OS do you have installed and what ADK do you have installed as well?  There is a newer version of the Windows 10 ADK (which can be used on Win 7, 8, 8.1 and Win 10) that came out in conjunction with the Windows 10 Anniversary update.  

I am running Windows 10 v1607 (build 14393.82) and the ADK for it is 10.1.14393.0.  Perhaps the newer ADK may help with the bitlocker detection?  If you have an older version, you can remove from control panel and grab the latest ADK from Microsoft, install it directly and then try re-creating the WinPE with the latest version (if you have an older one).  

Thanks for the suggestion.  I'm currently using the 1607 ADK to generate this WinPE image.  As time allows I think I'm actually going to try and go the other way and build a winpe image with the 1511 ADK and true image 2017 as I know the 1511 ADK is definitely working with true image 2016.  I have not actually tried True Image 2016 with the new 1607 ADK so it's possible (however I think extremely unlikely) that Windows changed something between 1511 and 1607 that's causing these issues!

After playing around more this morning this appears to be related to Windows PE 10 1607 rather than Acronis 2017.

I tested out building the Acronis True Image 2017 Rescue Media in WinPE 10 1511 and everything works as expected.  My bitlockered drive can be unlocked and backed up perfectly using the manage-bde command.

I also tested out Acronis True Image 2016 in WinPE 10 1607 and Acronis 2016 does not work in the new WinPE 10 1607 either.

From what I can tell microsoft must have changed something in the way manage-bde is working or in the way 1607 is interfacing with drives with bitlockered drives that's affecting Acronis!

I would really appreciate it if somebody could look into these issues.  For right now I can just continue using the 1511 winpe build, however I would like to be able to upgrade in the future!

Thanks for the update.  I'm researching a little more myself.  SCCM OSD deployment also seems to have an issue with the 1607ADK - could very well be a bug.  The original Windows 10ADK had all kinds of trouble too that only got fixed in 1511.  Might be waiting on MS to fix this one.

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/790fc96a-b674-4013-94…

For right now I can't tell for sure if it's a bug with 1607 or just a change in one of their processes. I lean toward them having changed something that is messing with the Acronis Application as I can browse and access files fine from the bitlockered drive in 1607 it just seems like for some reason Acronis is not realizing that the drive has been unlocked! I'm guessing they maybe they changed something in the header of the volume or something that Acronis is looking at to verify that the drive has been unlocked!

I did submit a support request to their tech support and they said they're going to look into this issue and hopefully fix it in a future build!

I wanted to update this post that this still appears to be broken with the latest version of acronis 2017 and windows 10 pe 1703.

I can unlock my bitlocker encrypted partition and browse and open files on the encrypted partition fine using manage-bde on win pe 1703, however when I go backup the encryption in the acronis 2017 winpe media the partition type is being listed as "FS: Bitlocker Partition" and when I go to perform the backup I'm getting the error message "Unable to back up a locked volume encrypted with BitLocker.  Unlock the volume or turn off BitLocker, and then try again".

I would really like this issue to be fixed as I'm not having to use to release old media with Acronis (1511 Windows pe still seems to be working properly with Acronis 2017).

WinPE version = 15063 (1703)

Acronis 2017 = 20.0.8041

Thanks for any information you can give me!

Andy

Andy, thanks for the update.  The main question I need to ask is whether you have opened a Support Case with Acronis Support for this ongoing issue?

If not, then you need to do so and to work with the Acronis developers to identify what needs to be fixed in their product - we are just users here so cannot fix issues in the Acronis product, only offer suggestions / work-arounds etc.

Steve Smith wrote:

Andy, thanks for the update.  The main question I need to ask is whether you have opened a Support Case with Acronis Support for this ongoing issue?

If not, then you need to do so and to work with the Acronis developers to identify what needs to be fixed in their product - we are just users here so cannot fix issues in the Acronis product, only offer suggestions / work-arounds etc.

I have in the past and I just went in and commented on the ticket with this reply!  So far they've just kept telling me that it'll be fixed in a future release, but it does not seem to be getting fixed!

Andy, thanks for confirming that you do have a Support Case for this issue.  The only other suggestion would be to drop a PM to Slava and ask him to take a look at both this topic thread and also your support case, to see if there is a possibility of this being fixed in the near future or not?

I just got an update back from Acronis support saying that this is not a supported feature and as such they could not support it.  The only alternative was to backup the drive from a full installation of acronis 2017.  I know this is not the case though as this works properly with Acronis 2017 and Windows PE 1511.  If they're really not going to fix Acronis to work with Windows PE 1703 I'm going to half to find another product that will do these backups as this was one of the main reasons I bought Acronis and have used it for several years!

As more and more people are encrypting their hard drives this diffinitely seems like something that Acronis should continue supporting!

Andrew, just curious, but maybe acronis is still seeing it locked because Acronis was launched before the drive was unlocked. Could you build the winpe with the 10.9 advanced MVP tool and bitlocker support which is available as part of the build. Acronis will launch automatically, but close it down. Then unlock the drive and verify you can view the content in A43 or explorer++. Once that's verified, launch Acronis again and see if that helps. Wondering if Acronis being launched before the drive is unlocked may cause an issue. You can run the unlocked from the MVP winpe so perhaps that may help too?

Bobbo_3C0X1 wrote:

Andrew, just curious, but maybe acronis is still seeing it locked because Acronis was launched before the drive was unlocked. Could you build the winpe with the 10.9 advanced MVP tool and bitlocker support which is available as part of the build. Acronis will launch automatically, but close it down. Then unlock the drive and verify you can view the content in A43 or explorer++. Once that's verified, launch Acronis again and see if that helps. Wondering if Acronis being launched before the drive is unlocked may cause an issue. You can run the unlocked from the MVP winpe so perhaps that may help too?

I actually had that same thought and custom configured the winpe image to not automatically load acronis and would load it manually after I had unlocked the volume.  Unfurtunately that did not seem to make a difference.

The Acronis support person did get back to me this morning asking for some more diagnostic logs to see what's going on so hopefully they can figure something out from the logs that I'm going to provide them!  I'll keep you guys updated!

I got a final email back from Acronis Support this morning informing me that this is not a supported use of Acronis and that they would not be fixing this bug on future version of Acronis.  This is ashame because this means I'll be leaving Acronis and looking for a different product as this is a required feature for me that's worked great since the windows 7 days.

Bawww. That's a terrible answer. Let me pass this onto Gaidar. Winpe has native bitlocker support to do exactly this. If True Image winpe can't take advantage of this built in capability, Acronis is missing the mark with bitlocker users and that's to their disadvantage.

Windows supports it in winpe and it seems like it's just a matter of the application not properly detecting the unlock so that it can continue like it should be after the unlock has been applied in the winpe.

Thanks!  Let me know what you here back as I've been a very happy Acronis user for 10+ years!

I have been playing around with Macrium Reflect this afternoon and it appears to work perfectly with windows pe and bitlocker and it's free for the features I need so for right now I'll be using Macrium Reflect on the encrypted drive and if Acronis does not get this fixed shortly I'll be migrating my non-encrypted installation over to Macrium Reflect as well.

I found this same problem after creating the Rescue Media using the new Acronis True Image 2018 with the build-in tool, and all my drives are Bitlocker enabled, and I have also added the needed "manage-bde" files and commands.  I saw the same error message now, does that mean the Rescue Media is probable using the bugged Windows PE 1703 or latest?  How can I "patch" the older Windows PE 1511 to this new Rescue Media disk?

Michael, this is an old forum post and there have been changes made since it was raised.

I would recommend creating the MVP Custom ATIPE builder version of the WinPE Rescue Media which includes BitLocker support as an option and will work with the latest Windows 10 build 1709.

I have a MVP WinPE USB stick with BitLocker support that works just fine with my BitLocker encrypted external USB drive, where I just need to run a small batch command file to unlock the drive.

You need to use the BitLocker Control Panel to backup your encryption key to a text file and store this on your USB stick along with the simple bat file as shown below.

rem Unlock BitLocker protected drive from WinPE
manage-bde -unlock d: -rk BitLockerRecoveryKey.txt