Using SZ for Incremental Backups AND Storing Full Images Outside the SZ??

[feverfive]

Right now, I don't have incremental backups scheduled, nor do I use Secure Zone (SZ)--I've read of user issues when using SZ, thus my reluctance to employ that. I simply create images at least once/week--they are stored in a partition set aside especially for that purpose on my external HD--nothing else is stored there. I typically keep the 4 previous images. I've already restored images stored in this way w/ no issues.

Anyway, the meat of my question: is there any reason I cannot use part of that same partition space (I've assigned drive letter "I:"--for "image") for using SZ? What I envision is simply saving an image in SZ, then scheduling incremental backups to append to that "original" stored image. However, I would also like to maintain my current schedule of at least weekly full image backups stored OUTSIDE of SZ. I'm hesitant to have only the SZ image as my backup. It would probably be unnecessary to do both, but, the SZ issues I've seen & heard of make me hesitant to rely only on that stored image.

Is there any reason I can't do it this way? If I can do it this way, next step is to learn how to use incremental backup.

[pjb024]

I would recommend that you create a SZ on your external HD and create backups as per your schedule, say weekly full backup and daily incremental as an example of a typical schedule. Make the SZ large enough to hold say 3 backup cycles and you will never run out of space as TI will automatically overwrite the oldest backup cycle (oldest full backup and its related incrementals).

Things to check before you rely on this methodology:-

Is your external HD visible to TI when you have booted from the rescue disk? (Needed for you to be able to restore images)

Don't activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager as you may then have problems booting your system if your external HD is not online (or seen to be online) at boot time. You don't need to activate it anyway as you can restore using the Rescue CD.

SZ works well and is the easiest way to manage backups so give it a try and let us know how you get on.

[Menorcaman]

I second all that.

Regards