Acronis Secure Zone issues

Hi all,

We've purchased 20 licenses for Acronis 9.1 last month, and it's working pretty ok.

I have installed True Image Enterprise on a server that has a tape drive, where I send the daily backups to, but I also created a SZ so that when people want to get a file restored, I don't have to rely on someone to fetch yesterday's or last week's tape to be able to do it. (it's a remote server and restoring from tape takes AGES, even for a file that's about 1Mb!).

So I thought that I'd create a SZ and then schedule a weekly job that runs every Monday, Wednesday and Friday (which should normally be overwritten, right?) and one job that runs every tuesday and friday. Theoretically I would have two images then, stored in the SZ. This way, I can go back two days if someone wants me to restore something without fetching the tape. (each image is 60GB, that's why I want to keep 2 days worth of backups).

Now, when I want to test-restore a file/folder/partition, I cannot choose any of the backups made! (currently there are already two jobs that successfully ran, so that means that there should be two images.... The Wednesday job and the Thursday job ran --> two different schedules)
But i cannot pick any of the images that were made!
If I choose recovery or mount image, it would just present me with the restore options (snap resotre, file/folder, partitions), but it doesn't let me choose the image to restore.

When I manually backup images to SZ on our testserver (no scheduling), and I try to restore, i CAN choose between the different images I manually made.

So my question is: is there a way to keep up to 2 days worth of backups in SZ when using scheduling? (since you can't name these images)

Also, is that scheduling job I used overwriting the image over and over again, and is that why I can't pick it? it's weird, because the SZ size was 130 GB and now there's about 50GB left, which means there should be TWO images there....

Please help me out here,
thanks!

Regards,
Trigun

 

My understanding of the Secure Zone concept is that Acronis created this facility specifically for single PC use and particularly when a PC has only 1 HDD, which with the big drives today is pretty much the norm for a home PC. The SZ enables a user to securely store images on the same disk as the OS. So even if the OS is corrupted (including the MBR) the user will still be able to boot using the TI CD and then run the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. The SZ and ASRM really work best together.

Another Forum Member (Xpilot) has found some innovative ways to use SZ on a single PC in a home environment but in a commercial, networked environment I would suggest that SZ is possibly not the best use of the software. (Acronis Support may disagree).

Without really understanding your network layout or requirements it is difficult to make an intelligent recommendation. However, as a general guideline, I am recommending to all my customers that they move from Tape to Disk as their primary backup solution. In some instances where a customer may need to keep backups for a long time (usually legal reasons) then my recommendation is that they move backups from Disk to Tape and use the Tape for their historical backups, with all current backups being stored to Disk.

In medium sized LAN configurations, high-capacity, network attached storage (NAS) is becoming so inexpensive that it really is in many situations the most cost-effective way of dealing with the issues around backups. In smaller environments (e.g. a 4 to 8 PC LAN), discreet USB external storage will often do the job and costs very little in terms of money or expertise.

 

I have a question regarding the placement of Secure Zone. I am using an External USB Hard Drive to store the .tib file.

I think that I should install secure zone onto that drive. Is that correct??

 

There is no requirement to have a secure zone on a USB hard drive.

 

So what you are tell me then is that:
When using an External USB HD you do not have to install SZ at all?
Do you need to create a Boot Media CD?
Thanks
Irv

 

Yes to both questions.
It important to create a rescue CD as if you have a failure of the hard drive where TI is installed you would not be able to access your back up images in any other way.

Xpilot

 

Thanks a lot for clearing that up for me. I will create a rescue CD.

I have one other question. Now that I have removed the SZ from my C drive and freed up the space, whenever I reboot the boot loader comes up and tells me that it can't find the partition?

 

If you used the manage secure zone wizard to remove the secure zone this boot problem should not have arisen. If you removed it another way I suggest you create it once again using the wizard and then remove it using the same tool. Your boot problem should then be solved. When running the wizard to remove the zone you will be able to allocate the freed space to your C drive. If you already have other partitions on this drive you may be able to allocate the space to one of the other partitions rather than C.

Xpilot

 

I did uninstall it the wrong way.
When I try to recreate the SZ it runs thru with errors. I have tries it a few times with the same results.
When the machine reboots I get an error "Acronis Loader Fatal Error: Boot drive (partition) not found. Press enter to try to boot your OS.
I'm afraid I really got it screwed up now.
Any Suggestions?

I was able to get some help from Acronis..Thank You
Used the MBR Repair utility and back in business.

 

Well, on that remote site we have about 30 - 40 PC's.
There is one FileServer with a tapedrive and 1 Domain Controller.
The Fileserver is being backed up to to SecureZone I created.

When I manually create backups to the SZ, i can pick one to make a restore.
However, when I schedule these backups to the SZ, I cannot pick any backup to restore from. It just gives me one without me being able to choose.

The fileserver has a capacity of 300GB, with 100GB in use. (raid5). So there is no way we can externally backup up the images, unless to tape. But like I said, restoring from tape takes a veeeeeeeery long time.

Does anybody have the same problem as me, when scheduling task to the Secure Zone that they can't pick the images manually when wanting to restore?

Thanks,
Trigun

 

Hello Trigun,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image 9.1 Enterprise Server

Please complete the steps, mantioned below:
1) Could you please make screenshots of all your steps during the restore process? If you are not familiar with making screen shots, please read the below step-by-step instructions.

- Get to the window which you want to make a screen shot of;
- Hit the (Alt+)PrintScreen button on your keyboard;
- Run Paint usually available in Start\Programs\Accessories or another graphics application;
- Choose Paste command in Edit menu;
- Save the result picture in JPEG format being preferable.

2) Could you please create Acronis Report (please see https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=55317 for the instructions) where you have created Acronis Secure Zone, send it to support@acronis.com along with the link to this thread and screenshots. This will allow us to investigate the problem thoroughly.

Thank you.
--
Fedor Kurbatov

 

I have the same problem! I got Acronis True Image Home 9.0 build 3.641 and I cannot pick any of my restores when trying to restore. It just gives me one of the restores but I don't know why.
I am using a scheduler because it is much more easy to work with a scheduler than to do this manually.

I would be glad for any help!

 

Hello Trigun and Merlok,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are very sorry for the delay with the response.

Please be aware that, as it is mentioned in Section 3.3 of the Acronis True Image 9.0 Home User's Guide, the backups saved to Acronis Secure Zone are deleted automatically if required. Acronis True Image uses the following scheme to clean up Acronis Secure Zone:

• If there is not enough free space in the zone to create a backup, then Acronis True Image 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 the Acronis Secure Zone.

You can always check how much free space is left in the zone on the second page of the Manage Acronis Secure Zone wizard.

Thus, the most probable reason why Acronis True Image does not allow you to choose which backup you want to restore is that there is actually only one backup in Acronis Secure Zone. In other words, there is not enough space in Acronis Secure Zone to hold two full backups. So, when the second full backup is created it automatically overwrites the first one (according to the above mentioned rules 1 and 2).

If that's the case, we recommend that you either create an incremental or differential backup instead of the second full backup or increase the size of Acronis Secure Zone so that it can hold two full backups.

Note that if there is enought space in Acronis Secure Zone to hold two full backups then during the restore Acronis True Image will ask you for which backup you want to restore (see the attached screen shots).

If that's not the case, please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Then please submit a request for technical support. Provide the report.txt file collected in your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov