Delta restore to encrypted drive

[Keith Weisshar]

Why is delta restore not working when restoring to bitlocker encrypted drive.  It automatically does a full restore in windows re even if I leave delta restore checked when initiating restore from windows. After restore bitlocker is automatically disabled and I must encrypt the drive again.

[n8chavez]

I would assume its because of the encrypted drive. In order to image an encrypted drive any imaging application must do a forensic image; meaning that every block on that drive must get images and not just the used ones. The encryption prevents then from knowing what's used and what's not. As a result delta is not used.

[al3x]

Bitlocker encryption is still a little tricky unfortunately. There was a little discussion in December about the possibilities that might work to fix backups with Bitlocker:

Starting around here:
https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/thread-1...l#pid11336

@admin then picked up that discussion and said they're gonna look into it if possible:
https://www.easyuefi.com/forums/thread-1...l#pid11346

Could be that Bitlocker will be supported fully in a future HBS update but currently that's not the case.

[admin]

Yes, the current version still does not support BitLocker. We will conduct a technical feasibility analysis as soon as possible. If technically feasible, we will provide this feature in 2026.

[davidjohn]

Why is delta restore not working when restoring to bitlocker encrypted drive.  It automatically does a full restore in windows re even if I leave delta restore checked when initiating restore from windows.  After restore bitlocker is automatically disabled and I must encrypt the drive again.

What you’re seeing is expected behavior with the current version of Hasleo Backup Suite.
Delta restore works by comparing used blocks between the image and the target disk. With BitLocker enabled, the drive appears as fully encrypted at the block level, so the software cannot reliably determine which sectors are unchanged. Because of that, it falls back to a full restore in WinRE. After restore, BitLocker is disabled because the restore process overwrites the encrypted volume structure.
At the moment, BitLocker + delta restore is not supported. The administrator has confirmed that full BitLocker support is under technical evaluation.
Workarounds you can try:

1. Temporarily decrypt the drive before creating the backup image. Then delta restore should function normally.
   
2. Use full restore when restoring to encrypted volumes (current supported method).
   
3. Re-enable BitLocker manually after restore if encryption is required.
   

Until native BitLocker-aware delta restore is implemented, full restore behavior is expected when targeting encrypted drives.
Hope that clarifies what’s happening.

[al3x]

Too many bots around here