HDM 12 or 13 --- any progress with Truecrypt?

I'm using HDM11, and I generally love it, but there are some issues that I would be willing to upgrade for. If anyone can tell me whether the issues with Truecrypt drives are resolved in HDM12 or 13 (assuming 13 will be out shortly) I would appreciate it.

The problem is that almost all of my partitions on my biggest, fastest drives are encrypted, and HDM11 refuses to use them as a target for backups, or as a source for backups, unless I either do them file by file (which is very slow), or as an entire drive sector by sector (which copies a bunch of free space and makes the backup files twice as large as they should be -- which in my case means several hundred GB larger than they should be).

Luckily, the one exception is that it will back up the encrypted system drive as if it were unencrypted, i.e the partition is 100GB, but only about 20GB are used, and so my backup file is only about 12GB --- which shows that it should be just as easy to do the other drives.

Because HDM won't let me create a backup file on a Truecrypt drive, I have to attach a slower and smaller external drive to make the backup, and then copy the backup from the external drive to the Truecrypt drive, and then delete the original from the archive database, and then add the copy to the archive database. Only then can I mount it, or see it in the list of backups.

I can't understand why HDM can do something as complex as mounting an encrypted, compressed archive so that I can browse it like a normal drive, and yet it can't do something as simple as just writing it to a Truecrypt drive in the first place. Truecrypt is completely transparent to every other program, so what's the deal? The only thing I can think of is they want the Windows version and the Rescue version to work the same (and obviously you can't write to a Truecrypt disk if you boot up from a linux CD or whatever), but it seems kind of dumb to not take advantage of running under Windows.

Any updates on the status of this greatly appreciated.

 

Paragon software does not currently support backing up to encrypted drives, however, hopefully I can shed some light on some things, first off the reason why paragon can backup an encrypted system when you loaded the OS is because the system is un-encrypted at that time, so there generally won't be an issue. The next issue is that Paragon can't actually mount an encrypted compressed archive, again that archive of the system is actually un-encrypted which we won't have issues with.

 

Thanks for your reply. What you said makes perfect sense, as far as it goes.

But by your definition, ALL of my drives are unencrypted (or more precisely, decrypted) when I'm trying to make a backup. They are all mounted with the correct password as soon as I log on, and every program I've ever used except Paragon backup, including most other Paragon functions, can read and write to them as if they had never been encrypted. So why can't Paragon Backup see them?

If I want to mount an archive that I have copied to an encrypted drive (which is now decrypted with the correct password), I can do it, as long as I've put it into the database. But if I want to make a backup, I can't use that same drive, either as a source, or as a target. There are only two kinds of drives I can see as logical drives in Paragon Backup:

1) a drive that has never been encrypted
2) the encrypted system drive that was booted with the correct password

All my other drives are mounted with the same password as the system drive, long before I start the Paragon program, but Paragon sees them only as "local disks" which must be backed up in total. It doesn't see any free space if I want to make a partition backup, and it doesn't even show them as possible sources if I want to do a file or folder backup. And of course, it doesn't allow me to use them as a target for a new archive, even if I'm backing up an unencrypted disk. Out of 12 partitions on three physical drives, Paragon Backup only works on one of them.

It lets me do all of those things with the system drive, which is just as encrypted as the other drives. And if I copy an archive to an encrypted drive, Paragon lets me mount that archive and browse it, and it lets me do a restore from it. So obviously, Paragon has no problem with the encryption. But for some reason, whoever wrote the Backup function is not on the same page as the rest of the company.

I can't write my backups to the drive I want, even if I have an archive on that drive mounted while I'm making the backup. I have to attach an external drive that's never been encrypted, and use that as the target for the new archive, and then copy it to where I really want it.

Even Notepad can write to those drives, so why can't Paragon Backup? It's very annoying, and it makes no sense.

 

The volumes that Paragon isn't seeing as decrypted--are they decrypted at boot time?

 

please reply if this helps

mount your truecrypt drive.
select the new drive letter
go to ADVANCED SHARING
SHARE the drive, fix permissions so that everyone can do all things to drive

then restart paragon

when selecting a location to back up TO (you want to back up to the truecrypted drive), selec the TREE annd select NETWORK out of the tree.
now navigate to the drive letter within the network.

your truecrypt drive may show up in here.

let me know if it works
nick
i have used it htis way successfully, and have sent this numerous times to support as a request to fix