Windows 7 - Backup and Restore from/to TrueCrypt Volume

Hi there,

I'm bugging around with this for three days now. Just for your information: I recently bought a 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD and two 1TB Western Digital Caviar Green hard disk drives. I originally planned to have them set up this way: OS + (unused) user folders on SSD, "real" user folder on one HDD linked to corresponding libraries. Both HDD (+eventually the SSD) should be encrypted with TrueCrypt. So far so good - when logging in, TrueCrypt recognizes the connected hard disk drives and asks me for the passwords. The drives (NTFS formatted) get mounted correctly ("E:" and "F:") and I can read/write to them like expected.

But here comes the problem: I can neither backup files FROM nor TO one of the TrueCrypt-mounted devices. It seems that Windows Backup and Restore can only backup from/to devices, which are listed in the disk manager. And sadly, the TrueCrypt devices aren't... Just the underlying hard disk drives, which are displayed as unformatted or "RAW".

Does anyone have a solution for this particular problem or any other suggestion how to organize my file/backup structure? My only requirement is, that both files in use and backups have to be encrypted and the access is easy. (Don't want to mess around for hours everytime windows boots just to access my files...)

Appreciate any help/ideas/suggestions.

Regards
Doc

Hi,

I've been fiddling with the exact same problem and have had some minor success: I can now perform a backup TO a truecrypt drive. It's a pretty simple workaround but it won't work on Windows 7 Home edition. Only on Windows 7 Professional and above. So here goes:
Mount your encrypted backup volume (mine is a container but it shouldn't be any different for a partition or disk). Right click on it in explorer and choose Share With -> Advanced Sharing -> Advanced Sharing -> Permissions. Remove "Everyone" and add yourself and "SYSTEM" give both read and right permissions. Now open the Control Panel and go to System and Security -> Backup -> Change Settings. Choose Save on a Network and browse for your shared folder (yes it's a folder now) under your computers name. After you select it enter your own user credentials and press OK. Now select the shared folder from the list, press next and set up your backup.

I had locations on encrypted truecrypt volumes in my Librarys so the backup failed. After i removed the checkmarks from them the backup finished succesfully.

Now only remains the question how you're supposed to backup files FROM the encrypted volumes.
Any ideas?