1649: Compatibility of Acronis Backup Software with Encryption Software

Last update: 06-05-2020

Acronis Backup software may fail to back up or restore partitions encrypted by disk-level encryption software.

The following situations can occur:

  • Acronis Backup software may fail to access an encrypted partition from Windows and thus will not back it up;
  • Acronis Backup software may fail to resize an encrypted partition during restore;
  • Acronis Backup software may back up an encrypted partition from Windows, but restoring such a partition will make it unencrypted. If an encrypted system partition is backed up and then restored, then the machine will become unbootable after the restore. This is only true when working in Windows;
  • Some files may be missing in the backup.
  • Files that were encrypted by third-party software may be corrupted after restore

More information

Acronis Backup software can always create a raw (sector-by-sector) backup of an encrypted partition when booted from Acronis Bootable Rescue Media. See also Creating a Sector-By-Sector Backup with Acronis Products.

If the encryption key is based on the hard drive or some hardware serial numbers, a sector-by-sector copy may not work as expected. The best solution will then be to create the backup in Windows. Then, when restoring it, do it as you would do it normally. The only difference is that after the restore you will need to rebuild the MBR. See Restoring Windows Boot Loader Manually.

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