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Acronis Compatibility with Disk Encryption

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Hi all,

I am exploring disk encryption for my system but am concerned about the compatibility of Acronis when backing up and then restoring a partition which is completly encrypted.

So I have two questions:

1) Is there any encryption software out there that is known to be more compatible than others with Acronis?

2) If I create a backup while in the Linux based bootable media, instead of Windows 7, will the data on the encrypted drive remain encrypted in the *.tib or does it get decrypted then too?

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This: http://kb.acronis.com/content/26327
it refers TIH2012 but I guess B&R11 might behave similar.

The likes of PGP FDE and others - it is a transparent encryption - that means the OS isn't aware of the encryption done by a driver in between. So Acronis will see an unencrypted disk and do unencrypted backups (unless you encrypt them again with a password on the backup job).
As FDE-Software uses a custom bootloader to boot from an encrypted partition, you should really test if the restore from bare metal works as expected. Don't expect support from acronis either.

If you backup with the bootable media, the disk will be locked - that means acronis will backup the encrypted disk. This is also unsupported - backing up the raw partition might work, but a bootable restore might give problems. That's why bitlocker is unsupported in this scenario.

Alright, thanks for the KB article.

Sounds like the following scenario would work.

Backing up the encrypted partition in Windows 7 using ATIH2011 would result in an UNENCRYPTED backup.tib file located on my passport drive. The *.tib file could be encrypted with a password during the backup process.

Recovering this information would result in an unencrypted partition being restored, that is fully bootable and this can later be encrypted again.

Does this theory sound about right?

Thanks Heiko! I will test for sure.

You might have some boot errors after you have restore your unencrypted image. You could repair the startup with the Windows installation DVD. Once the disk is working normally unencrypted, you can then reencrypt it.