Storage Cloning an encrypted hard Disk

I have a large number of laptops on our current school contract which are required by law to remain encrypted using Symantec Endpoint Encryption (SEE). I want to upgrade a few of these from slow 5400 RPM mechanical disks to SSDs, but have no superuser admin privileges on the machines to initiate a network rebuild using the standard disk image and re-encrypt them. I've discussed this with a couple of engineers from the contract holder who have such privileges and neither was able to answer this question for me; Is it possible to clone the SEE disk from one of these machines to an SSD, and if so, will the cloning process carry the encryption across to the new volume?

 

If you made an image of the disk using a sector by sector imaging method it should be possible.
In fact i just found this...

Creating a Sector by Sector Ghost image of a hard drive encrypted with Symantec Endpoint Encryption
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH104163

 

I've cloned a bitlocker encrypted drive, and it didn't work, had to disable the encryption, clone the drive, then re-enable encryption, not sure how it would work with the Symantec encryption though

 

Thanks, so it's confirmed to work with Ghost. I wonder if it'll work with Acronis?

 

won't do any harm to try

 

Acronis claim it can:

https://kb.acronis.com/content/1543

 

Suspend the encryption no need to disable.

 

Trouble with Ghost is if your moving to a bigger or smaller drive it won't shrink/expand.
It see's the encrypted partion as one big block.
128GB SSD to a 256Gb SSD will leave you with only 1 half of the SSD usable. xD

 

sorry that's what I meant, i'm having trouble with words today, I keep loosing them :-S

 

Well I've hit a brick wall with this one. I tried cloning the disk in Acronis True Image Home 2010 and the disk is selsctable at the source screen, but when it comes to selecting the target disk, none of the disks are selectable.

 

Is the target disk brand new or a refurb?

I've had this problem before. If partitions etc are on the target it won't use it.

Either a new disk or DBAN the refurb should fix it

 

or diskpart select disk x where x is the number of the disk you want to edit, then type clean

 

It's a factory fresh SSD. That's not the problem, the problem is that the source disk is SEE encrypted and ATI Home can't read the partitions or data to clone it.

 

are you able to turn off the encryption, then clone and then re-encrypt?

I know its a pain, but the encryption is kind of designed to prevent unauthorised access, and copying an encrypted drive would give an attacker unlimited time to attack the encryption.

 

I don't believe I have the admin privileges to disable the encryption on these machines but then again I've never tried. I'm still finding out what my admin privileges actually allow on the new network.