Surface Pro 2 512GB TPM BitLocker -- How to create disk image for bare metal restore?
Surface Pro 2 512GB
Windows 8.1 fully patched
Acronis True Image 2016 5634
I want to create a complete image of the SSD drive starting from track 0 to the end of the drive including all sectors and that can be used in a bare metal recovery. This is not a scheduled backup. It is a one time backup so I can test somethings that are low level on the computer and then restore it completely to the state it was in when the backup was taken.
I have tried doing it from within Windows but the resultant backup, evern through backup by sector and include unallocated sectors were checked, was actually a file level backup.
I tried doing it from a bootable recovery flash drive but the software said it could not backup a locked drive with BitLocker active.
I tired suspending BitLocker and then doing it from a bootable recovery flash drive but go the same "can't do it" message.
I tried disabling the TPM and suspending BitLocker and got the same results.
I have been going back and forth with Acronis technical support since August 2, 2015, or almost two months. All I get is requests for system reports and screen shots.
Acronis techinical support cannot provide step by step instructions for doing this. In fact, I am begining to believe that their Q/A has never done a complete disk image backup and bare metal restore test where BitLocker is in use.
If anyone has successfully gone through this process I would appreciate step by step instructions as to how you created the backup image and, after doing a security erase (writing zeros over the entire drive) were able to do a bare metal restore of the image to the disk.