How to backup an (Bitlocker-)encrypted OS drive with AOMEI?

Anibor · 08 Jan 2023

jumanji said:

Hi @Studynxx,

If AOMEI Backupper encounters a bitlocker encrypted drive, it will instead of Intelligent Sector Backup, do a sector by Sector backup - more precisely it will be a sector by sector cloning that will copy (backup) the encrypted data.

Yes, if the backup is made outside of Windows.

jumanji · 08 Jan 2023

Anibor said:

Yes, if the backup is made outside of Windows.

Nope.

Even if the system backup is made from within Windows , AOMEI Backupper will do a sector to sector cloning of an encrypted drive.. In fact that is one reason, I dumped AOMEI Backupper.

For a longtime I was using Paragon Hard Disk Manager. When doing a system backup from within Windows, it will ask you to feed in the Recovery Key into it to decrypt and then do an Intelligent sector backup. So I dumped both AOMEI Backupper and Paragon Hard Disk Manager and shifted to Macrium Reflect.

Macrium Reflect will automatically apply the Recovery Keys stored in the system and do an Intelligent Sector Backup when done from within Windows.

To backup with the Recovery Media, one has to set it to store the Recovery Key files during the Recovery Media Creation process. Once done, during backup with the Recovery Media, it will automatically decrypt the drive with the stored Recovery key/s and do an Intelligent Sector backup.