Secure Zone

[THINK FIRST]

I make daily backups to the secure zone with incremental backups. The reason I chose secure zone is that I thought it would discard the oldest backup when the zone is full. That did not happen, and it seems that this is not the case with incremental backups. Is this correct, and will the zone automatically discard the oldest full backup?

[tmm]

I think that you get this problem especially with incremental backups, because the software cannot automatically delete the oldest file. This file woul dbe your base backup and the other incrementals will need it.


I would go for a complete full backup in case the secure zone is full.

Security would also be a reason for me, because I´m not sure to which extend we can trust the increments. Some people reported problems in that case.

[supercool]

I came accross the samething today.
is there a way to delete the incremental backups?

[Xpilot]

Originally Posted by supercool

I came accross the samething today.
is there a way to delete the incremental backups?

When using the secure zone it is necessary to intersperse incremental or differentials with full base images from time to time. If this is not done the FIFO basis will not kick in and the zone will fill up till it can take no more.

I use the secure zone the idiot's way. I have sized a separate internal drive, where the zone is located, to be big enough to take all the backup images I need. A schedule automatically creates a full image at my chosen frequency. It really is a case of fit and forget as TI does it all.

There is one big drawback however if you want to validate an image in the Zone. You cannot validate just one image. TI will go through them all each time a validation is run. Since Acronis will not fix this anomaly I have my own way round it. I do not run validations ! Instead I restore images to a spare drive periodically and you can't have a better validation than a sucessful restore.


Xpilot

[supercool]

So if my zone is full, I should try to increase the size of it and then run a differential backup.

Question 1. If I run a differential backup I’m guessing it will remove by first initial backup once it starts running out of room on the secure zone?

Question 2. I guess I cannot remove incremental backups?

[Xpilot]

Originally Posted by supercool

So if my zone is full, I should try to increase the size of it and then run a differential backup.

Question 1. If I run a differential backup I’m guessing it will remove by first initial backup once it starts running out of room on the secure zone?

Question 2. I guess I cannot remove incremental backups?

1. No, you should run a new full base image.

2. No, Once a new base image is created the existing incrementals will be orphaned and they will be over written by the new set of increments as they are created.

Incrementals or differentials have to be supported by a full base image.
The SZ will not delete the one and only base image.