Yes, you'll be able to back up the encrypted system partition to VD, but only in hot processing mode (VSS or Hot Core).
Yes, you'll be able to mount the VD and use it as usual.
You'll be able to restore the system partition, but it will be unencrypted, i.e. it will need to be re-encrypted after the restoration.
Yes, but these will also be restored in unencrypted fashion to whatever file system they were originally stored on.
My experience tells me non-system encrypted partitions can only be backed up and restored in the most impractical sector-by-sector mode. It's actually more practical to decrypt them before backing them up.
Thank you for the reply. So, I decided to test it out with a junk laptop ... it did not go well, sadly.
It was possible to back up the encrypted partition. I didn't test mounting it, though, and didn't get to test recovering it.
That's because the first test I did was to let everything get encrypted, then restore the partition to a point before it was encrypted. At which point, all hell broke loose. The result: the message "EEPC has been corrupted" ... and a bricked machine.
The one variable I did not take into account is that the encryption tool (again, not in my control) encrypts ALL of the partitions on my disk. So restoring just one partition isn't going to work, if one is not encrypted and the others are.
I WAS able to restore if I re-formatted the disk first (so not truly bricked), but that required me to restore all partitions, which is about 5 times more work and totally defeats the purpose of having the OS on a separate partition from all the data.
Hopefully this data will help others in this situation.