-1

Title says it all.

Running full-disk encryption on my Pop!_OS laptop. I want to quickly and seamlessly backup and store files to an unencrypted NTFS USB drive, for sharing on other systems. Put differently, how do you backup encrypted drives so that the backed up files can be restored (decrypted) on any other system?

Best way to do this?

Rohit Gupta
  • 2,721
  • 18
  • 27
  • 35
tforsean
  • 1

1 Answers1

1

You have to unlock the drive before you can copy the files, so the copies will be unencrypted on the new drive.

Tetsujin
  • 47,296
  • 8
  • 108
  • 135
  • Thanks. How do I do that? – tforsean Jul 21 '23 at 15:53
  • 1
    You have to have done it before the computer will even boot. Whilst you're using it, it's unlocked. It's still encrypted, but unlocked, enabling access - so any file you copy to another drive will not become re-encrypted. – Tetsujin Jul 21 '23 at 15:56
  • So you're saying there should be an option in my BIOS settings to unlock the disk encryption? – tforsean Jul 21 '23 at 15:58
  • 1
    No. There's some point in the boot process when you have to unlock the drive or it won't boot. After that, to all intents & purposes it is 'not encrypted' to you as the user. I don't know PopOS so I can't tell exactly how it is presented, but this is true of all operating systems. – Tetsujin Jul 21 '23 at 16:28
  • Oh, you mean when I enter my PopOS encryption password? Yes, I am doing that every time that I log on. But when I copy files from my (encrypted) hard drive to my NTFS USB drive, they are still encrypted. Or so I presume, because I'm not able to open/view any of the files on my other laptop. – tforsean Jul 21 '23 at 16:58
  • No, they shouldn't be. It might be a permissions issue, hard to say. – Tetsujin Jul 21 '23 at 17:01
  • Not even a permission issue, it wouldn't be passed to a NTFS. The problem is other, likely with the files. BTW, **what exactly are those files?** – ChanganAuto Jul 21 '23 at 19:57
  • 2
    tforsean - you really need to ask the question you need the answer to, as it appears what you presented was an [XY Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_problem) You made assumptions about what the actual issue was, then asked how to fix that, rather than ask how to fix your *actual* problem. – Tetsujin Jul 22 '23 at 13:20