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Cloning an encrypted HDD

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2016-02-21
2018-04-17
  • Steve Underwood

    Steve Underwood - 2016-02-21

    Hello,

    I need to clone a laptop HDD which was encrypted (the OS is also locked behind encryption). Is this possible with Clonezilla? The about page states "the image size is limited by the boot media's storage capacity". Is it possible to load Clonezilla onto an external drive formatted with exFAT? Is it possible to load Clonezilla onto a USB, and use that to image the internal HDD to an external HDD? Furthermore, I attempted to use Clonezilla live installed onto a USB 3.0 drive with said laptop: it froze at "SYSLINUX 6.03 EDD 2014-10-06 Copyright (C) 1994-2014 H. Peter Anvin et al" and wouldn't allow me to enter any commands.

    The Laptop was encrypted with DiskCryptor, and the iso used was 'clonezilla-live-2.4.5-23-i686.zip'

     
  • Steve Underwood

    Steve Underwood - 2016-02-22

    Oh also, the laptop in question is an acer aspire s3 with an intel i3 chip

     
  • Steven Shiau

    Steven Shiau - 2016-03-06

    I am not familiar iwth DiskCryptor. However, from the web it looks like it's encrypted over file system, not on the lower level. Therefore it's possible Clonezilla can work with it.
    As for your questions,
    (1) Is this possible with Clonezilla? The about page states "the image size is limited by the boot media's storage capacity". Is it possible to load Clonezilla onto an external drive formatted with exFAT? -> Syslinux does not support exFAT. Therefore if your machine uses legacy BIOS, then no. If it's uEFI mode, then yes.

    (2) Is it possible to load Clonezilla onto a USB, and use that to image the internal HDD to an external HDD? -> Yes.

    (3) attempted to use Clonezilla live installed onto a USB 3.0 drive with said laptop: it froze at "SYSLINUX 6.03 EDD 2014-10-06 Copyright (C) 1994-2014 H. Peter Anvin et al" and wouldn't allow me to enter any commands. -> Looks like it failed due to boot loader (syslinux) support issue. Maybe you have to wait for newer version of syslinux.

    Steven.

     
  • Sherwin Julius F. Abellanosa

    How can we clone encrypted HDD using clonezilla only make images for block size not the entire hdd size. just like the non encrypted HDD that only fit on a 8GB USB.

     
  • Steven Shiau

    Steven Shiau - 2018-04-14

    This depens on the encryption method. If it's above the file system, then no problem for Clonezilla to backup that. If it's encrypted under the file system, well, it's kind of complicated...

    Steven

     
    • Sherwin Julius F. Abellanosa

      Hi,

      What do mean above and under the system?. I use the encryption method during OS installation guided volume encryption.

       
  • Steven Shiau

    Steven Shiau - 2018-04-17

    What's the result if you run something like:
    sudo ocs-get-part-info /dev/sda1 fs
    (replace /dev/sda1 to the partition you mentioned "encrypted")
    If it gives you the file system name, and it's supported by Clonezilla, then yes, Clonezilla will use "smart copying" mode for you. Otherwise it will use dd mode.

    Steven

     

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