What is the best scheduled method for using T.I.?

[Michael23]

After reading almost this entire forum, all the documentation, and a few days of experimenting on my own, I am still seeking the best, most reliable way to backup my hard drive.

I have made a full backup, and then an incremental that took as long to make and was as large as the original image.

I have had advice here in the forum to forget about incrementals, or also to do incrementals daily, full images weekly... and I am still not sure.

Last night I set a 'scheduled image' for the first time (incremental), and when I got up this a.m., I saw an error saying "failed to open secure zone for exclusive access"... but also a message saying the image was created! (???)

So, maybe I do not want to use the secure zone at all, eh?

I need to get this set up and move on.
My whole purpose in buying T.I. was on a recommendation from a current user, who suggested I could "set it and forget it" - but How?!?

Your suggestions are greatly appreciated!

[Acronis Support]

Hello Michael23,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

Could you please let me knwo whether the image was created or not? If it was created please verify it with the "Check Image" tool and let us know the result. Could you please describe what software is installed on your computer that works intensively with your hard drive (any sort of defragmenting or disk monitoring software, probably)?

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

[Michael23]

No, it had not made a new image this morning... but I just set another schedule a few hours ago, and checking it now, I see that it was successful.

I did not defragment, etc. and I am not aware of anything that would cause a full re-stamp of the time dates on the files/disk sectors.

ANYWAY - what I am really looking for is the absolute best, most reliable method to schedule a regular nightly backup that I can "set and forget."

Any suggestions there?

[Acronis Support]

Hello Michael23,

There should be no problems with imaging to Acronis Secure Zone because it is not accessible for any Windows applications besides Acronis True Image. Could you please verify the image that was created with the new scheduled task? Actually, if you schedule full image creation to Acronis Secure Zone you will always have the maximum possible amount of most recent full images and you don't need to take care of old images deletion.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman