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Backup to a target disk with BitLocker enabled?

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Hello,

I am interested in creating an image backup to a drive that has BitLocker enabled on it. Now my question is if I need to restore. Does the bootable media support restore FROM a BitLocked disk to another disk?

I seem to have found info about backing up a BitLocked album, but not about restoring from one. Thanks.

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https://kb.acronis.com/content/1734 applies to all imaging products and bitlocker... System must be decrypted first (booted to Windows). Then imaging can take place. As a result, restored images will also be decrypted and need to be encrypted again. This is because of limitations of encryption as designed by bitlocker and other encryption methods to protect the encrypted data. 

So if I understand correctly,  I would need to boot the disk containing my backups in another Windows instance, decrypt the data, and only then restore?

Brian, if I understand your question, you want to store a backup image on a destination drive that already has bitlocker encryption enabled and therefore I assume that the system which is accessing that drive can 'see' past the encryption in order to write to the drive.

If that is the case, then you would need to provide a method whereby the system performing the restore / recovery operation can also 'see' past the encryption in order to access / read the backup image file.

The Acronis bootable rescue media does not have the capability to decode a bitlocker encrypted drive but you could employ a different computer which can open the bitlocker drive and run the full Windows version of Acronis to restore an image from that drive to a slave drive connected to that computer.

The alternative would be to store the image on a non-encrypted drive and encrypt it afterwards then reverse the process should the image be needed for restore.

Hello -

I'm a bit confused by the above reply. I have a similar issue. I'm trying to backup my entire computer to an external drive. I have previously bitlocked the external drive using latest version of Win10/bitlocker. Obviously I don't want my backup drive to be unencrypted. I've encrypted the drive in both the latest bitlocker (win10) ver and in bitlocker compatibility mode. Also prior to backup, the drive is viewable in file explorer and it is UNLOCKED [e.g. I can manually create files on the drive].

Regardless of which version of bitlocker I used to encrypt the external drive, Acronis True Image 17 still CAN'T backup to it.  I receive an error message stating to unlock the drive (which it is).

Thus, the only conclusion I can come to is Acronis can't backup to a desination drive that has been bitlocked. is this correct?

..and yes, I'm encrypting the backup files on the external drive. I'm simply trying to prevent the drive contents from even being viewed.

Thx,
S

Here is the KB article about Bitlocker: https://kb.acronis.com/content/56619

Here is a link on Suspending Bitlocker so that True Image can work with the drive: 

http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/38508-bitlocker-protection-suspend-r…

I believe that you would need to suspend encryption temporarily on the external drive to make the backup and then Resume bitlocker when the backup completes.

As a simpler alternative, you might consider an external HD that comes with hardware encryption. I've used some WD Passport drives. They are encrypted, requiring a password to access. I've used them to backup from ATI. If you ever needed to restore a disk/partition backup, requiring boot from the ATI Rescue Media, you'd need to first unlock the drive and temporarily disable encryption.

I don't understand why you would need to have an ecnrypted drive for Acronis backups.  You can encrypt your backups directly in Acronis with 256-bit AES encryption and a stong password.  

Encryption is good, but it's a pain in the butt for backups and more likely than not to cause issues when it comes time to use them for restoring.  

Consider encrypting your Acronis backups directly in Acronis and it will encrypt your backup files with your strong password using 256 AES encryption only for those prorpietary backup files.  It is still very secure and easier for you to provide the password to decrypt them within the Acronis Windows GUI or bootable recovery media when it comes time to do a restore.  

If you have other files/folders on the external drive (other than Acronis backups) that you want encrypted, then you can opt to encrypt just those files/folders with bitlocker or whatever tools you're using, instead of the entire disk and they too will be secure, but without the limitations/trouble of having full disk encryption.  

Ultimately, it's up to you, but this will make your life easier while still keeping your data secure.