Hello — Sorry if this a redundant question, but the pending EOL of windows 10 and the fact that Windows 11 pro has bitlocker turned on, I want to be sure I know what to expect with reflect backups and clones

As I understand it when reflect creates a backup image, the data fetched is decrypted by the OS, so the data stored in the backup image is not encrypted, unless I have reflect add a password.

So, does that mean if I need to clone the boot drive, the clone of it will be un-encrypted? So, when that cloned drive is then swapped in to be the (new) boot drive will the OS then (1) do nothing (2) re-encrypted the new drive.

I guess that this would be the same if a “restore” would be done from a backup 

Thanks

If you don't want Bitlocked partitions, just turn it off.  You still have 2 years to W10 EOL.
Either imaging or cloning cause the drive to be seen as un-encrypted - intelligent sector copying, for one, needs to see the filesystem data.
After restoring, or cloning, you need to re-encrypt the target drive.

Hello -- Thank for reply ---

yes Oct 2025 is years away, but it seems to me that time is going faster and faster ---
it seems like yesterday I was warring shorts now I a  need a coat outside

So, if I understand your reply.  cloned/restored object will remain   un-encrypted and will remain that way  untill I request that "bitlocker" is turn back on?  

thanks

I don't use Bitlocker but I believe you would have to re-encrypt after the cloned/restore. However, I don't know if you can have a default type setting where it would automatically encrypt without any manual intervention if Bitlocker was enabled on the machine. Bitlocker does do work in the background so you are not delayed while it encrypts an entire partition since that can take a fair bit of time for a large partition with lots of files.

+x

 

Seekforever - 14 November 2023 5:26 PM

I don't use Bitlocker but I believe you would have to re-encrypt after the cloned/restore. However, I don't know if you can have a default type setting where it would automatically encrypt without any manual intervention if Bitlocker was enabled on the machine. Bitlocker does do work in the background so you are not delayed while it encrypts an entire partition since that can take a fair bit of time for a large partition with lots of files.

thanks again ---

If you make a backup of a BitLocker volume while it is unlocked, then the backup will be captured in unencrypted form. Consequently, any restores will result in the target having unencrypted data. That will also be the case even if you enable Reflect encryption. To my knowledge, Windows 11 will not automatically enable encryption at that stage. Some OEMs ship systems with BitLocker pre-configured, but that doesn’t mean that Windows will automatically enable encryption.