BeCrypt & ABR 11 Advanced Workstaion

Hi Duncan,

I am a Technical Account Manager for Becrypt, based in Sydney. I know DISK Protect extremely well as I've been using it and selling it for nearly 7 years. I don't use B&R but I do use Acronis True Image on machines that are secured with Becrypt DISK Protect. The problem you think you have depends on when you are performing the backup. If the backup software is running within your Windows session then the backup will work as before. The reason for this is that DISK Protect works in the beneath Windows and so by the time the disks' contents are passed up to the backup software it has been decrypted.

If you plan to backup via some other bootable media, i.e. you're booting from an Acronis boot CD or WinPE or BartPE and then mounting the encrypted disk as a secondary volume then you won't be able to backuo without first using a Becrypt WinPE compatible plugin. This plugin is on the release CD and I use it in a BartPE bootable image. The plugin requires the user to enter their preboot user name and password which then enables the Becrypt driver to gain access to the encryption key and then encrypt and decrypt the disk on the fly. Once this driver is in place the backup can commence as normal.

My advice would be to call our Help Desk and they will be able to provide additional help and documentation. If you're in the UK it's 0845 838 2050.

Regards
David

Hi David,

Many thanks for your reply.

In answer to your question, then yes the software would be running from withing the windows environment once the PC has been booted us, so going by your theory the backup should work successfully.

Now what i'm not sure about is, if i require to restore this image onto the same p.c. with the same hard drive from a bootable cd, would i be able to wipe the existing contents of the encrypted drive and then be able to restore the image file?
If i am able to do that, does the restored image drive then still have the encryption software on it as B&R should have been a sector/sector image of the drive as it was at the time of the backup.

Alternatively, if the original drive was broken / failed and i took a new unencrypted drive and restored the image, would the software still work as expected, or is there something withing the software (becrypt) that gets locked to the drive specifics that will stop it from working. i.e. going from a 120gb (becrypt) drive to say a 320gb (unformatted) drive.

I suppose in reality the only real way to test this is to try it, but with the thought that i might loose / destroy the drive in the process, then i'm not so keen to give this a try without knowing all of the facts first and determining what the implications are if it goes wrong and i'm unable to recover the drive from the image file created.

Regards
Duncan

Hi Duncan,

Restoring an image shouldn't be difficult. The backup will be an unencrypted copy of the machine that was running encrypted. When it is restored it will still, of course, contain DISK Protect, which you will need to uninstall and then re-install (Use Control Panel -> Add and Remove Programs as for any other application).

I've just backed up an encrypted machine using BartPE and the DP-Std plugin. I then rolled this image back over the machine. The restore removed the pre-boot login screen and I logged into Windows as normal. The DISK Protect Management Tool reported that disk encryption was enabled but that the disk was not encrypted. I un-installed DISK Protect, which then required a reboot. After logging back in DISK Protect was fully removed and the machine was in a state where DISK Protect could be reapplied and the machine encrypted.

One thing you might find is that the restore does not stop the DISK Protect pre-boot screen from being displayed. If this is the case then your backup does not restore a standard Track 0 (MBR). If this is the case then 3rd party tools can create this from within Windows, or a DOS bootable floppy can be used via 'fdisk /mbr', which writes a standard MBR to track 0. This can also be done with the Windows installation tool. You will probably find that your restore software includes an option to write a boot record, which is what you need.

I would strongly advise that you test this out now before you actually have to recover a machine. Learning how to do something when you have the pressure of a user breathing down your neck is not easy. If you can find time now using a test machine that does not have real data on it, so can therefore be wiped without fear, then you will be able to experiment and then feel more confidant should you ever need to do this.

Restore an image to a machine with a bigger disk won't be an issue either, you'll be uninstalling DISK Protect and Windows will take case of the disk size issues. DISK Protect does not lock itself to any physical hardware, so restoring an image should not cause you problems.

Regards
David