Backup/clone OS drive Windows 11?

[Mark Kaine]

So how does this work? I tried making a backup with macrium and it told me the drive is encrypted and the keys won't be backed up (or something like that) which would be whatever, if I had the keys - which I don't since this is a laptop and nobody told me anything... I also didn't make a Microsoft account, local only...

 

So what I did is turn off bitlocker/encryption... cloned the OS drive (macrium didn't complain this time) and now I'll swap the drives (whole point of making a clone since the laptop only has a 1TB drive...) then turn on bitlocker/ encryption on again and if I ever need the backup I'll turn off bitlocker again - with hopefully having a key / password this time - even though I didn't need one this time...

 

 

 

Just wondering if that's the usual procedure for backups in windows 11? 

 

Or should I just leave device encryption off? Like what's even the point it didn't even ask for a password...

[Levent]

I just use Veeam. It works fine even if you have bitlocker enabled. I keep bitlocker enabled, just because I would rather not have my data out in the open whatever it is.