Macrium Reflect Premium Workaround

Studynxx said:

I meant Macrium PE sorry

I don't recall whether the PE based media has any sort of File Explorer and whether it will prompt for a BitLocker password on the free edition. If it does, great! If not, use the command prompt to unlock the BitLocker volume. Easy!

Macrium PE does have a file explorer (bottom left corner). You can do a test run to check.

hsehestedt said:

Sure, you can unlock a BitLocker encrypted drive even when booted from the WinPE based recovery media by simply entering a command that includes the BitLocker password for the drive on which you have stored the image.

I've done this myself many times before I upgraded to the paid version of Reflect.

EDIT: Here is an example - manage-bde -unlock E: -pw

At this point BitLocker will prompt for the password to unlock E: and you can then freely access your backup.

BTW when you did this, were you using the native Windows 10 (actually windows 7) backup solution? If so, upon decrypting the VHDX partition, what command did you use or what did you do to deploy the system image backup?

Studynxx said:

BTW when you did this, were you using the native Windows 10 (actually windows 7) backup solution? If so, upon decrypting the VHDX partition, what command did you use or what did you do to deploy the system image backup?

No, I was using Macrium Reflect, although I have also done this with the Windows 7 imaging tool that is available in Windows 10.

Note that the paid version of Reflect allows you to store your recovery key on the boot media so that it can automatically unlock your BitLocker volume, but I don't like having my key readily accessible on the boot media.