Couple of Basic Secure Zone Quesitons

I have a few Secure Zone questions.

1) I have a number of full backups in my Secure Zone, is there some way to delete some of the older ones?

2) It seems that I can have only one Secure Zone, is that correct?
2a) If I have two removable USB drives can each have a Secure Zone.
2b) Is there a way to have a Secure Zone on each internal hard drive?

3) I am backing up the NTFS and Boot partition of my C-drive in case of problems, i.e my C-drive dies or I get a serious virus. My C-drive contains XP and my applications. Can I recover my Windows XP OS and everything if I use incremental backup or should I just do full backups?

Thanks

Jerry

 

First off, IMHO, the ASZ is really only for those who have only one drive in their system. If you have an additional internal or an external drive, I would not bother with the ASZ. That being said, in answer to your questions:
1-) No
2-) Yes, AFAIK
3-) Either will work

 

Weaz,

Thanks for the info and speedy response.

My use of TI is solely for when I (or a virus) corrupts my C-drive and I want to get back to a "clean" state. Is that a proper use of TI. Are there any details or gotcha's that I should know about? I hate to be in a situation where I need to restore and then realize I didn't do something right.

Jerry

 

“Is that a proper use of TI”
One of several uses.

You really need to define what your needs are as far as disaster recovery and archiving. How far back do you want to be able to restore? How much disk space do you have to store backups? How much time can you allocate to performing backups? All things you need to define for yourself.

I have both internal drives and external USB drive enclosures dedicated to storing images. I run the backups in the wee hours of the morning. I can go back for a month with weekly backups and at least three days with dailies. All my backups are FULL images. That meets my needs fairly well.

 

Weaz,

My ambitions are very simple. For example, I want to try some beta software. Before I install it I would do a TI backup. When I am done with my testing I would do a TI restore. I think that is better than the beta uninstall and uninstalls often leave junk around in the registry and whatever.

What do you think?

Jerry

 

Sounds like a plan to me

 

Hello JerrytheSurfer,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note that the curent version of Acronis True Image 9.0 Home does not allows you to manually delete backups that are stored in Acronis Secure Zone. Moreover, this was created for secure reasons, in order to prevent from accidental deleting backup files. Acronis True Image 9.0 Home uses the following automatic scheme to clean up Acronis Secure Zone:

- If there is not enough free space in the zone to create a backup, the program deletes the oldest full backup with all subsequent incremental/differential backups.

- If there is only one full backup (with subsequent incremental/differential backups) left and a full backup is in progress, then the old full backup
and incremental/differential backups are deleted.

- Otherwise, (only one full backup left, and an incremental/differential backup is in progress) you will get a message about space error. In that case you will have to either re-create the full backup or increase Acronis Secure Zone.

Additional information can be found in Chapter 3.3 "Acronis Secure Zone" in the Acronis True Image 9.0 Home User Guide.

Yes. If there is an Acronis Secure Zone on the hard disk, then Acronis True Image will only allow you to manage it, but not to create another one on the same hard drive. However, you still can connect another hard disk with an Acronis Secure Zone on it and Acronis True Image will allow you to save image archive to any of the Acronis Secure Zones as well as restore, explore or verify them later.

I would also recommend you to take a look at this FAQ article explaining the reason why we do not recommend creating Acronis Secure Zone on a detachable drive.

Please note that as TheWeaz said you can use both full and incremental backups to recover your system in case of failure. The difference is that the full backup contains all data at the moment of backup creation while the incremental backup file only contains data changed since the last full or incremental backup creation. Therefore, it is smaller and takes less time to create. But as it doesn’t contain all data, all the previous incremental backups and the initial full backup are required for restoration. So, to simplify, if you have full backup and incremental backups chain you will be able to restore the system to the point of full or each incremental backup creation. Please also take a look at Chapter 3.2 "Full, incremental and differential backups" of the Acronis True Image 9.0 Home User Guide.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov