Cloning An Encrypted Drive

[flychromeboy]

I've been asked by a new client to upgrade his laptop hard drive, but the only thing is that his current drive is encrypted. It used to be his work laptop, so I'm guessing its likely to be Pointsec and not Trucrypt. I was wondering if anyone has managed to clone an encrypted hard drive and if they have, what steps/software they used. After some googgling, it seems that clonezilla might be able to do the trick, but it doesn't seem to be a comprehensive yes.

 

[purple_minion]

I've been asked by a new client to upgrade his laptop hard drive, but the only thing is that his current drive is encrypted. It used to be his work laptop, so I'm guessing its likely to be Pointsec and not Trucrypt. I was wondering if anyone has managed to clone an encrypted hard drive and if they have, what steps/software they used. After some googgling, it seems that clonezilla might be able to do the trick, but it doesn't seem to be a comprehensive yes.

If it's not locked you can do a copy sector for sector, and clonezilla will fall back to dd command which will do just that. The cloned drive most likely will still be the same size unless you can get in and resize the encrypted partition somehow.

 

[LunchBox]

WOW, I was thinking about asking the same question.

My client has a laptop and PC with HD encryption called SafeBoot by McAfee. If I close a HD will it boot up and still work?

 

[tankman1989]

you could do it in Linux if you are familiar with the "dd" command. Or you could try DD-Rescue.

 

[flychromeboy]

If it's not locked you can do a copy sector for sector, and clonezilla will fall back to dd command which will do just that. The cloned drive most likely will still be the same size unless you can get in and resize the encrypted partition somehow.

How do you mean its not locked? I need to cloned drive to be bigger than the old encrypted hard drive, that's what my client has asked for. Would it just be easier to decrypt the entire drive (even though this may take a long time) then just copy the files over to the new drive (in an external enclosure) and then switch them. Or does someone have a better idea

tankman1989

Is DD-Rescue linux or windows based. I'm don't have much knowledge of Linux you see

 

[MobileTechie]

You don't need to use ddrescue unless there is a problem with the drive.

I think you might run into problems cloning to a larger drive, depending on how the encryption scheme works. I've not done it but I know that with say Truecrypt you cannot just change container size but whether that extends to encrypted partitions or whole drivers I really don't know. Try it and find out.

Is the entire system encrypted (including system files) or just a data drive?

 

[john56477]

Here is my lazy guide, it worked for me.


1) need internal HD and enclosure case to give USB connection
blank CD, to be used to run cloning program.

2) Download free disk clone software
easeus.com/disk-copy/
EASEUS Disk Copy
I use "Disk Copy" to clone not "TODO"

Sector by sector copy: Makes physical 1:1 copies (clones) of hard disks and partitions which ensure 100% identity to the original.

Anyway, download this software, it will be saved as dc.zip
when you unzip it, you get dc.iso and a readme file, extract and save.
The next step is to burn this dc.iso to a blank CD

3) to burn a iso image to CD
Download and install ImgBurn 2.5.0.0
filehippo.com/download_imgburn/
Run ImgBurn, and burn dc.iso to the CD

4) connect new USB drive, insert CD, and reboot the PC.
click disk copy
it is a very slow program to load, just be patient.
The actual cloning takes me about 1 hour for 75GB.

If you clone to a bigger disk, the extra space will be un-formatted,
and not encrypted.

 

[StauntonComputerRepair]

Decrypt then copy data and re-encrypt. If you do it any other way you risk corrupting the data.

 

[dbdawn]

Most all of the encryption methods encrypt the whole disk. Unless you decrypt the data and then clone the disk to a larger disk it will not work.