Image backup of TrueCrypt encrypted drive

Am on the road and have no spare system for testing, so hope someone has experience with this.

- Entire system drive (750 GB) encrypted using TrueCrypt 7.0
- Win7 x64
- Want to backup an image of this drive to an external one using Paragon Drive Backup 10.

As Paragon runs from within Windows, the backup would be unencrypted (presumably). However whether or not the backup ends up being encrypted is not an issue for this drive.

My question however is, if I backup the entire drive this way (image), would I then be able to restore this to a new drive in case the original drive fails, and would this restored drive then work?

Paragon has the option to run the backup without the first track and/or without the MBR. I am a bit lost on the technicalities of this, in terms of what TrueCrypt might or might not do to the first sector(s) of a disk and/or the MBR that may cause problems for a restored backup to boot/work - assuming that the TrueCrypt encryption details/files would also be backed up as part of the image.

Basically what I would like to do is backup the entire disk either encrypted or unencrypted, and then restore it to a new drive when needed, and boot that new drive without issues. In order to do this, can I simply run the backup, or do I need to avoid backing up the first sector and/or the MBR, or would there be other issues or things to take into account (I believe Windows 7 has a general issue with booting images taken from it, at least someone mentioned this somewhere).

Anyone done this and succeeded?

Many thanks

 

I found this thread discussing the issue with an Acronis product. I assume the same would apply here. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=237371

If the MBR isn't backed up ("do I need to avoid backing up the first sector and/or the MBR") I don't believe the drive will boot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record