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Backing up encrypted drive

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I went to backup an encrypted drive using the ATI 2019 boot disk, but got an error saying can't backup a Bitlocker encrypted drive. I was attempting to do a sector by sector backup of an entire disk.

I found a few posts by others referencing this, and they say that you can't backup a bitlocker encrypted disk using Acronis TI.

What I don't understand is why I've done it before using Acronis 2019 on a Veracrypt encrypted drive, sector by sector, and have tested it everything worked out great with it. Including having restored it.

What is it that causes the issue? Are there any known work arounds?

I just don't get why Acronis can't do a sector by sector image of a drive regardless of what's on it.

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John, the issue here is simply of the way in which the encrypted data is presented, such that when going through a backup operation the application might be fooled into believing it has encountered a partition boundary or other filesystem component.  Encrypted data has no rules for what characters may occur.

Acronis has always advised that the bootable rescue media cannot backup encrypted drives or partitions. See KB 56619: Acronis True Image: compatibility with BitLocker

The way around this limitation is to create the MVP Custom ATI PE version of the rescue media and take the option to inject BitLocker support into the media, such that you can unlock the encrypted drive in the offline rescue media environment to create the backup without any need to use sector-by-sector backup mode.  The backup image would be of unencrypted data so should be password protected from within the ATI application options.

Steve Smith wrote:

John, the issue here is simply of the way in which the encrypted data is presented, such that when going through a backup operation the application might be fooled into believing it has encountered a partition boundary or other filesystem component.  Encrypted data has no rules for what characters may occur.

Acronis has always advised that the bootable rescue media cannot backup encrypted drives or partitions. See KB 56619: Acronis True Image: compatibility with BitLocker

The way around this limitation is to create the MVP Custom ATI PE version of the rescue media and take the option to inject BitLocker support into the media, such that you can unlock the encrypted drive in the offline rescue media environment to create the backup without any need to use sector-by-sector backup mode.  The backup image would be of unencrypted data so should be password protected from within the ATI application options.

 

 

Thanks Steve, what you said makes sense. I created the Cusom ATI PE boot disk, but I still have reasons for wanting to back up a drive in its encrypted state.

I've also had trouble in the past with backing up/restoring a drive encrypted with Bitlocker using ATI, because even though backing up an encrypted operating system from within the OS (where it shouldn't know it's encrypted), I had some issues were some perameters or something within the operating system that were different since the OS was  encrypted although in an unlocked state. I don't know if the way I just said that makes any sense, and I can't remember exactly what the issue was off hand. It was a while ago. I think it had something to do with booting the computer, because it was going through a different bootloader process or something thinking it was encrypted.

Or maybe it was an issue with re-encrypting the drive after restoring it because the OS thought it was already encrypted.

Either way, using Veracrypt, backing up and restoring an entire encrypted drive has worked out great. Plus I think it's more secure than bitlocker. Although I have found it to be a little slower, but either way, I think I'll just decrypt my bitlocker drive, re-encrypt with veracrypt, and back it up as normal

Thanks again, John

John, it is interesting that you are able to backup the drive when encrypted by Veracrypt but not by BitLocker, so I guess that there are differences in how the encryption is implemented that allow ATI to handle the Veracrypt encrypted data.  The key point here though is that you have a process that you want to use and that works for you.

I am considering how to protect my personal files in the event my laptop was stolen and the SSD removed from it. Having only Windows 7 Pro which does not have BitLocker capabilities I am considering VeraCrypt and came-across this thread.

While it seems the entire system drive CAN BE encrypted using VC I don't think I want that level of complexity in my system, and this old kb about ATI11

https://kb.acronis.com/content/14877

says a mounted VC container can be used with ATI's File Backup method. That might be all I need--while it seems that files in an encrypted container can escape as temp/cached files and whatnot, I keep my system clean enough that I'm not especially worried about random files that might be discoverable on the otherwise non-encrypted SSD.

Are there other (easy) drive encryption options that I should consider?