Which backup strategy for encrypted Windows?

Hi everyone.
As mentioned in the subject, I have a Windows 11 system encrypted with BitLocker.
What is the best software for backing up and restoring an encrypted system? Would you clone the entire system or just the partition, or could the encryption cause issues during restoration?

I don't have experience using bitlocker, but here is the macrium reflect knowledge base article on it.

Technically, there should be no difference between backing up an encrypted system and a non-encrypted system with one footnote. Let me explain...

Let's start with a question: What do you do differently to access your files on an encrypted system? Answer: Nothing. This is because once you are signed in and the drive is unlocked, Windows automatically decrypts files as you access them on the fly without you doing a thing. This is no different with a backup. As the backup program reads data from the disk, Windows automagically decrypts the data. As a result, your backup manages to save your data but does so unencrypted, that is unless you instruct the backup program to apply its own encryption as it saves the backup.

Here is the footnote: Some backup programs, such as Macrium Reflect, do have the ability to backup encrypted data. The result is that you can restore data with encryption in place. Note that this is only useful if you restore the entire drive. If you restore just some data to a system with Bitlocker, that data gets automatically re-encrypted when it is restored to the disk that has Bitlocker enabled.

In my case, if I restore a whole drive, I simply re-enable BitLocker after the restore so I could care less if the backup program preserves BitLocker info.

I hope that all this makes sense. Please feel free to ask more questions if anything is not clear.

The imaging software I use recommends turning off Bitlocker before doing backups, moves, and restores...then re-enabling it after rebooting from the restore.

Drive images should be stored offline on removable media, and only online during imaging operations.

Banjoman301 said:

The imaging software I use recommends turning off Bitlocker before doing backups, moves, and restores...then re-enabling it after rebooting from the restore.

Click to expand...

That must be an incredibly poor backup program. A program written that poorly would never be taken seriously by me.

hsehestedt said:

That must be an incredibly poor backup program. A program written that poorly would never be taken seriously by me.

Click to expand...

I can't take your comment seriously...depends on what you're doing -


We don't do Hot Backups.

I have never understand why home-users encrypt the Operating system.. Data partitions i understand and recommend if they store sensitive data.. but i will never encrypt my system-drive as it has no real meaning... more then it actually slows down the drive.