Acronis True Image, formerly Cyber Protect Home Office, is a popular backup, cloning, and imaging software, in case you want something other than the default Microsoft recommended backup app. The application has finally received support for Windows 11 version 24H2 and BitLocker, which is the 2024 feature update for Windows 11.
This comes at a great time since earlier this month, Microsoft announced that it was beginning to roll out the update to more users. As such, the feature update should be available for downloading to more people.
In case you may not have followed, Windows 11 24H2 reduced requirements for automatic device encryption (Auto-DE), and thus, OEMs can enable automatic BitLocker encryption. Following the change, Microsoft also published a guide about BitLocker key backup and recovery.
Also, some users on the Acronis support forum (Link1, Link2) were complaining about compatibility issues with version 24H2, so those issues will hopefully be resolved as well.
The full changelog for the new version, Build 41736, is given below:
What"s new
- Added support for Windows 11 (version 24H2), ensuring support for automatic BitLocker enablement.
- Security fixes.
- Improved clarity in error message descriptions.
- Bug fixes and other improvements.
Acronis also lists the system requirements, including the hardware requirements. It notes:
System requirements
Hardware requirements
- Intel CORE 2 Duo (2 GHz) or equivalent processor that supports SSE instructions.
Sadly, though, if you are on a Core 2 Duo or something similar that does not have x86_64-v2 instructions like SSE4.2 and PopCnt, you will not be able to install Windows 11 24H2, and no trick or hack exists that will be able to work around this requirement. Hence, the mention of Core 2 Duo in the requirements means little on the latest client Windows.
Microsoft also recently clarified that it has no intention to lower the system requirements for Windows 11 despite what some media reports have claimed.