Acronis True Image 2016 compatibility with Hardware Encrypted drives
I am considering upgrading my hard disk to a HED type SSD (Samsung 850 EVO Series MZ-75E250B/AM 250GB 2.5in SATA III Internal SSD With AES 256 Encryption). Will I encounter any issues moving the OS over to a hardware encrypted drive using ATI 2016? Anyone done this?

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RenMin,
With disk encryption, you end up in 2 situations:
- case A: you produce the backup with ATI running in Windows, you get an image with decrypted data. You can encrypt the file containing the data by setting encryption in ATI. When you restore (it is highly recommended to use the rescue/recovery medium to restore), however, you might first run into trouble unless you restore to a non-encrypted drive, and then re-encrypt the drive. Second, before re-encryption, you might run into boot issues because disk encryption typically involves the boot records. You can fix this using Windows tools and others. But if the second problem shows up, it might be complicated to fix it. The pros of this case is that you have a protected backup for your data, you can have several versions, etc. The cons is that you might not be able to restore it to a blank disk easily. You would have to try this because it depends on your encryption technology, your OS, etc.
- case B: you produce a full disk backup using ATI running from the recovery CD, using the sector-by-sector option for the backup. ATI will copy all the encrypted information across the entire disk (even unoccupied sectors). When you restore using the recovery medium, you should not have issues. The pros of this approach is that the restore process is easier. The cons, is (a) that the data in the backup file is unaccessible off line, outside of a successful restore on the original machine because of the encryption, and (b) the backup files are much larger because the entire disk is backed up.
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Thank you for your responses. I have already ordered the drive so I am going to have to make the most of it. Encryption was not a feature that I really wanted. Value and price were my motivating factors for the drive selection.
What I am hoping ATI will do for me is:
1. clone and move my HDD to SSD. Nice to have, SSD comes with utils to do this but it would help gain confidence with ATI to use it here
2. Provide Backup/Restore for resolving Windows and/or software operational issues. i.e. SSD Hardware is OK
3. Provide restore in case SSD fails.
Pat,
For option b, if I understand, an encrypted backup will mean that the backup may only be restored to that drive. Even a new drive of same make/model will not work since ecrytion key stored in drive will be different. Please confirm.
If this is true, Then option A would be a better choice for me. I will look into not turning encryption on and that should hopefully simplify things.
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I have finally succeeded upgrading my HDD to SSD and it was not as straight forward as I expected. This was a laptop so I opted to go the route of using a USB/SATA drive caddy. This did not work for me no matter what I tried. I tried exchanging the location of target SSD between laptop and caddy and I tried the ATI full backup/universal restore as well as HD clone utility. The restore would succeed and drive would boot but the OS was unstable.i.e. unresponsive start menu, apps hung, etc. I tried a second USB/Sata caddy from an external USB drive I scrounged and same result. The Samsung data migration utility was no better than ATI. I checked both drives in System Information and the both reported as 512 bytes/sector so I thought I was good to go.
Success was achieved as Vyacheslav suggested using Full backup/ Universal restore but I had to perform both operations with the drive inside the laptop. i.e. backup HDD to a third drive, remove it, install SSD, then restore to SSD. The "Cloning" utility probably would have worked if I had both drives on the same SATA controller. i.e. for a laptop, one is better to go the route of replacing optical bay with HDD caddy and cloning drives while they are on the same SATA controller.
As I stated in my previous post, I will leave encryption turned off as I don't need things to be any more complicated.
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Congratulations on getting your SSD installed.
You will be pleasantly shocked at how fast the SSD is compared to the HDD.
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