Newbie question: have support for NTFS EFS?

[Andrei]

Hello, I intend to use Clonezilla to back up my Windows installation. The NTFS partitions contain files that are encrypted using the Encrypting File System (EFS), or that have the Compression bit set.

My question is: does Clonezilla correctly back up encrypted and compressed files on NTFS?

I ask because I've noticed in the past when using Linux that ntfs-3g didn't respect these file attributes. My concern is that this behavior may affect Clonezilla, rendering certain files unrecoverable. Thank you for your time.

[Steven Shiau]

I have never used EFS before, however, to me it looks like it's based on the NTFS file system. It does not encrypt the data in the file system level. Therefore I think Clonezilla can support that.
Did you have any issue to use Clonezilla live for that?

Steven

[Andrei]

I have never used EFS before, however, to me it looks like it's based on the NTFS file system. It does not encrypt the data in the file system level.

I would like clarification: EFS is part of NTFS and is enabled when the user enables encryption for a file or folder:

(right click) -> Properties -> Advanced -> Encrypt contents to secure data

The user's password is used to transparently encrypt the data. Therefore a live Linux distro cannot access the contents of the encrypted files after mounting an NTFS partition. Does this mean that Clonezilla has a more low-level way of copying the files?

Did you have any issue to use Clonezilla live for that?

No, I haven't had issues in my limited testing. In case the backup images are faulty when I restore them, I shall return here to notify you.

[Anton Modaresi]

Does this mean that Clonezilla has a more low-level way of copying the files?

It doesn't read files. It copies disk blocks. So yes.