How to easily Clone / Backup entire drive / partition, even when encrypted

[Sethioz]

I've been using truecrypt basically my entire life to keep my data safe, i don't trust anyone, so encryption is a must have!
but it makes it harder to backup your data, however there are some very easy ways.

EASIEST, but not necessarily fastest, is to simply buy one of those HDD/SSD docking station that has clone function.
i only recently tested it, as i didn't have suitable drive and i wasn't willing to test on my primary drive.
I used alxum docking station:


It has built-in clone function that doesn't require PC. i'm not 100% sure, but every docking station that has clone function, should do sector-by-sector clone, which means that cloned drive will be identical to original drive, this includes drive's hwid and everything, but it doesn't clone things like power-on count, total data written and other SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) stats as those are not kept on the drive itself, they're somewhere in the firmware, however those stats are not important, they do not affect your data in any way.
I used that docking station to make a clone and it works same as original.

On my review video, i did not show it, but process is usually same on every docking station. on alxum, it's as follows:
+ insert both drives (drive A = source and drive B = target and drive B must be same size or bigger, otherwise it won't work).
+ wait til LED for A and B are both on
+ press and hold CLONE button for about 3-4 seconds, release and then 100% blue LED will stay on for short period of time ...
+ after releasing CLONE button, quickly press it again while 100% LED is still on (i had problem with this step as i didn't press it quick enough, it's kind of a safety feature that you don't accidentally clone a drive, that's why it's hard to hit).
+ you will know that it started cloning, when 25% LED starts flashing, this means that cloning process is between 0% and 25%, when process is above 25%, then 25% + 50% LEDs will be flashing and so on. when drive cloning is complete, all 4 (25% 50% 75% and 100%) LEDs will be solid on (no flashing).

NOTE - it took about 2 hours to clone 250gb SSD to SSD. i have no idea why so long, perhaps that docking station is just slow, it should take far less to clone 250gb ssd to ssd, but it's just press of a button and no PC needed!
Update: i cloned it again twice onto 2 other drives and it took around 1 hour, not sure why. drive that took 2 hours before, was source, but later i used it as target as i put latest copy of my drive onto it after i knew it works. so not sure why reading took longer than writing. only thing i can think of, is that it might have had a bad sector that prolonged the process, but SMART feature on the drive marked it as bad and on second run it no longer used that sector. That's all i can think of. drives have some extra space for that purpose, that's why 250gb drive only has 232gb useable space.

SOFTWARE ONLY
this is bit more complex process, but can be faster when done right, however it can also mess up your stuff.
there are various softwares that can make a true clone, but i'm not sure if there's a good free tool for it.
I have successfully used OSForensics to clone encrypted drive.

Using OSForensics
/ Other PC or laptop required!
/ DO NOT connect cloned and original drive to same pc at same time! it can mess up your BCD! i made this mistake once and had to decrypt entire drive to fix BCD issues. this happens cuz PC can't make difference between original and clone, so they will conflict! don't connect it via USB either!
/ Disconnect your original drive and connect it to other PC either via USB case, USB docking station / adapter or internally, but i wouldn't suggest internal, it can mess with boot settings aswell. it's best to have USB adapter / docking station / case

+ go to "drive imaging"
+ select source disk (if encrypted, you don't have to do anything with it, just make sure windows don't automatically format it as it always offers)
+ target image file = this is where you want to store the clone image (you can't write it directly to another drive)
- "verify image file after completion" is not necessary and it will take quite long to verify, but if you're paranoid, you can choose it. i don't see how drive cloning can fail, if there's error, it would tell you about it.
+ press "create image" and wait til its finished.

now you can disconnect your original drive and keep using it in whichever PC it came from

to put the cloned image onto a new drive:
+ go to "drive imaging"
+ choose "restore image"
+ click on ... (three dots) behind "source image file" and choose the file you saved earlier (where you saved the original)
+ select "target disk" = this is your target / new disk you want to turn into clone.
+ hit "restore image" and wait till process completes

that's it! you're done! DO NOT mess with the cloned disk, if you connect it to other pc for testing or try to mount it ..etc, then it might become unbootable (shouldn't, but just don't mess with it).
put it into your original pc / laptop and check that it boots as before

NOTE - keep in mind that some motherboards read the SMART data and will recognize that drive has been swapped, in which case it can change boot order or boot settings. i had this once aswell, motherboard somehow enabled secure boot and as result it kept saying there's some issue with winload.exe, which indicates that BCD was damaged or altered, but this was purely because of stupid motherboard that tried to make it "easy" to boot, but instead screwed it up.
if this happens, don't instantly assume that BCD is messed up, go check your BIOS, try boot override, try changing boot order (if you have that drive as primary / 1st boot device, then change it to non-bootable drive, some motherboards will try all drives if 1st boot drive didn't work, in my case that solved the issue, i had to choose non-bootable drive as primary boot and when that failed, it successfully found my encrypted drive and booted from that, it added 3-4 secs to boot, but i don't care, it worked).


Non-encrypted drive + free minimalistic software (quick backups)
if you don't use encryption, then there's very minimalistic tool that makes lightning fast backups as it compresses data.
it's called Drive SnapShot
it's minimalistic and basic, but works great, however making full clone of working drive might be difficult, i couldn't get it to work with encrypted drive, however it can easily backup your entire drive or partition, but boot records don't always copy over, i'm thinking it's because of encryption.
if you just want to backup all your data (not personal files, i'm talking about ENTIRE drive "as is"), then this tool is for you.

Snapshot can make shadow copy of running drive (if you're booted from C drive, it can clone / backup entire C drive, not many tools can do this as usually you'd have to unmount the drive, which obviously cannot be done on running drive).
So if you want to backup your running drive, then this tool is highly recommended.

+ click on "backup disk to file"
+ choose the partition or entire disk you want to backup / clone
+ click "next"
+ select the destination and name it (save on a different drive that has sufficient space, it does NOT destroy data, it makes a new file in target folder, for example save in "D:/backup1")
- optionally you can set "disk image encryption" which will encrypt the backup file so others can't access it (i strongly recommend encryption on every step).
+ click "start copy" (this process should take much less than drive imaging / cloning as this tool uses compression. this also means, if your drive is 250gb, then most likely the backup file will be half the size, don't panic! this is because it's compressed.

To test if it worked, click on "view contents of saved disk image" (its in main menu of the tool).
select "drive" letter where you want to mount the backup file (choose any free letter)
choose the backup file (one you saved earlier) and click on "map and explore virtual drive"
if you set password, then it will prompt for password, obviously you MUST enter it or backup cannot be decrypted
then snapshot will mount + open the backup as virtual drive, so you can browse its content and check that everything is there.

To restore, click on "restore disk from file"
select your backup image file you saved earlier
click "next"
now select the drive or partition you want to overwrite (restore / clone onto) = BE CAREFUL as this will destroy all data on the target drive / partition, so make sure you choose correct partition / drive. CHECK, DOUBLE CHECK and TRIPLE CHECK, because this cannot be undone!
hit "next" and complete the process.

i successfully used this process to copy encrypted partition, but it wouldn't boot. all the files were there, but i couldn't get the BCD working. either way, best pert is that snapshot can make clone of running drive, which is very useful if you don't want to shut your PC down, it can make shadow copy and it won't have issues with "locked" files or lack of permissions.

you can try to make clone of entire drive (select all partition on drive) and then restore onto new drive, but i think it's better if you backup each partition separately, for example win10 has 3 partitions:
1) 100mb system reserved (usually holds some boot info)
2) main partition (where windows and all your files are installed)
3) 500-600mb recovery partition (this usually holds recovery files)

so if you want to clone a drive, make backup of each partition, save them into separate files (like 1, 2, 3) and then restore them onto new drive in same way, it should offer to resize partitions (if not, use some other tool to partition the drive, like window's built-in disk management aka "create and format hard disk partitions).


anyway i have used all 3 methods and as i said, OSForensics and docking station will make sector-by-sector copy, but snapshot might not work that well for bootable drives. it makes fast and compressed backups, which makes it a great tool nevertheless.


EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition also has clone feature, it supports entire disk or partition, but I have not used it so I can't say much about it. Obviously if it's there, it has to work. EaseUS is quite reputable company and they make other useful tools aswell, so you might wanna give it a go.


Q/A:
Q: does it matter if i use bitlocker or other encryption tool?
A: NO, those tools can make clone of RAW disk

Q: does it matter what OS i'm using?
A: NO, those methods will make sector-by-sector copy, which means filesystem is irrelevant.

Q: what is "sector-by-sector" copy?
A: bah ... can't you use google? it means it copies every byte exactly "as is", which means drive will be 1:1 clone.