Acronis Backup&Recovery and Truecrypt

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Beginner
Posts: 3
Comments: 5

Hello

I plan to use Truecrypt for Notebook encryption.
I have read different opinions and explanations regarding compatibility with Truecrypt and how to handle backups but not really helpful.
How do I backup a Notebook with ABR 11.5 where the drive (c: partition where windows 7 is installed and D: partition where other SW is installed) is encrypted with Trueimage 7.1a, what do I have to do?
The drives are visible in windows.
I do not need to have the backup encrypted I can encrypt again after restore.
But how do I get windows to boot again after restore?
When I backup I guess the problem is the MBR and/or the Truecrypt loader.
I have read about RAW backup but this will need too much space.
Can someone post a proven way how to backup and restore?

Is it possible to make an Acronis boot disk with Truecrypt?

Wed, 08/28/2013 - 17:23
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truwrikodrorowrelupicugojestutroclulachosaswunuhospikigawakijosaswenomaruclojeueclikaspedrubewidebrisubrohutrurifruuagothunugekedrumucisiuobrobrecrupeslapuswosluprothethibakaslechurathikucli
Beginner
Posts: 0
Comments: 1

Hi Jacky,

I have kind of done what you are wanting to do. Here are my suggestions and experience.

If you intend to save the backups onto the laptop/desktop itself, you will need 2 drives assuming you are doing full disk encryption. If the backups will be onto an external device or to a network share, then you will only need one drive.

In my situation what I did is this:

1. Install Windows on an MBR partitioned disk (I used 7.... version 8 is incompatible, as is GPT partitioning as far as full disk encryption goes.)
2. Install True Image (I used 2012)
3. Install Truecrypt (I used 7.1a)

I have 2 hard drives. The first is the system disk with the operating system and other partitions. The second is a drive I use solely to hold backups.

I encrypted the first disk using the whole drive method. The second, non-system disk stays unencrypted.

I ran Trucrypt and fully encrypted the system drive. Using True Image, I create backups from the application in Windows and send the backups to the unencrypted drive. The backups are set to full disk method and encrypted using the SHA-256/AES-256 encryption in True Image.

The reasons for storing the backups on the unencrypted drive is (a) it makes them accessible to the True Image CD for easy restoration and (b) they are already strongly encrypted by True Image.

To see if the backups would work, I then shut down the system and rebooted using the True Image CD to boot the system.

I then used True Image to restore Disk 1 in it's entirety, including the 100 meg system volume, The C: drive that contained my operating system, and all other partitions that were a part of the full disk backup. True Image stated the recovery was successful, so I then shut the system down again, removed the True Image CD and restarted the system.

When the system booted up again, I was prompted for my Trucrypt password. I simply hit the Esc key and Windows loaded normally and was no longer encrypted. At this point, I re-encrypted the entire drive again using Trucrypt, without any issues.

If you follow this method, you will get a warning when you start the re-encryption process because it recognizes the bootloader from the previous encryption process. You can ignore it and continue and let the new encryption process overwrite the old bootloader.

I hope this helps,

Tue, 09/03/2013 - 18:58