Copying a Truecrypt system partition?

Discussion in 'privacy technology' started by elzmaddy, Aug 11, 2009.

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  1. elzmaddy

    elzmaddy Registered Member

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    Hello all, I cann't access Truecrypt's forum, so I'll try here...

    Does anyone know the procedure to properly copy over a Truecrypt-encrypted OS partition (Windows XP) to a new drive and have it boot normally?

    I cloned the OS partition to my new drive but I get a "missing operating system" message because I think I am missing the TC bootloader -- not sure how to get it on.

    P.S. Does it matter that the new parititon is bigger than the original? Will I get the extra space? Or should I just decrypt, copy, and encrypt the new partition from TC's GUI?

    Thanks for any feedback.
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2009
  2. testsoso

    testsoso Registered Member

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    If you try to change a large Disk my suggetion:

    1)boot from a bartPe Cd, or connect your curent disk with another PC,
    2)run truecrypt mount system partition without PBA,
    3)use the Shareware snapshot, copy the C:\ driver to an larger Disk,
    4)than again use snapshot restore it in the new disk.
    5)setup the new disk in your PC,
    6)encrypt the new disk with truecrypt again
     
  3. elzmaddy

    elzmaddy Registered Member

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    That Drive Snapshot program you suggested looked very promising. Unfortunately, I could not boot from the new drive's partition copy, even after setting the partition active and using Windows recovery tools FIXBOOT and FIXMBR. Maybe some of the nuances of the partition/drive could not be copied faithfully. I am now going the long route of decrypting the system partition, but this is sure to work.
     
  4. elzmaddy

    elzmaddy Registered Member

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    UPDATE: I still got the "Error loading operating system" using a copy of the decrypted partition. My suspicions turned to Truecrypt's boot manager as the cause. I took a chance and installed Smart FDISK's boot manager and I was able to boot to Windows. However, Windows tries to 'fix' this by 'installing new devices' and asking for a restart. So instead of restarting I launched Truecrypt's system drive encryption process and installed it's boot loader over Smart FDISK's. It is now encrypting -- so far, so good.
     
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2009
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