Acronis secure zone password = encryption?

Hi guys,

I've been looking around but I can't seem to find an up to date answer. Usually, I AES encrypt my backup archives. Encryption is not available if you save the archive to secure zone (one can only enter a password). Why is this?

- Is the secure zone itself encrypted?
- If not, how is the secure zone protected?

Please note my boot partition c: is a truecrypt volume. I want to make absolutely sure secure zone does not compromise my security: saving unencrypted backup's is a big NO.

thanks for any info!

Jeroen

 

The SZ is not encrypted and the only reason it is called Secure Zone is that the partition is not understood by Windows so you won't see it and can't accidently delete files from it. Paswords, AFAIK, only make the archive password protected but not truly encrypted.

TI can encrypt backups if you specify it when you make the backup assuming you have the version where this is offered (TI2009 only?)

Have you been able to backup and restore your TrueCrypt C drive? Encryped disks can be a problem because TI cannot make sense of the file structure. A possible way around this is to do a sector-by-sector backup in which TI does not bother interpreting the structure. Unfortunately, this means backing up the entire partiton even if only a small amount of it contains any data - this takes both time and storage space.

The other way I believe is to unencrypt the volume while creating the archive and then specify TI's encryption.

Whatever you do be sure to test a complete restore using the TI boot CD because most posts are about unable to make TI work with encrypted partitions.

Is there any reason you must use the SZ?

 

If I make a backup to a 'standard' (like NTFS) partition I can specify AES encryption. But this option is not available when backupping to secure zone? In any case I did not see the option. Perhaps I have missed something?

Quite a good remark. That is why I made the archive with Windows fully loaded. For Acronis it is like there is no encryption at all because TrueCrypt makes this transparent (so the backup part worked fine). I will most likely run into trouble when restoring the backup. At that point I will have to remove the encryption using the TrueCrypt boot CD + remove its bootloader, restore the (unencryted) archive and then reapply the TrueCrypt encryption.

Option 2 would be that I can restore the image whilst Windows is loaded but I assume that will not be possible. Can Aronis restore an image whilst windows is booted (we are talking about the system partition here).

For option 3 as you suggested, a sector-by-sector-copy, I have insufficient disk space. That would however be the safest option.

If I understand correctly this would simply imply not backupping to secure zone and make a Acronis AES encrypted archive? That would in essence be what I have done apart from saving it to secure zone instead of applying Acronis AES encryption.

For use of ease really. I had 30+ gigabytes of unallocated space

 

There are times when the SZ can be handy but the way I prefer to work it is of no benefit to me so I don't use it. You can remove it and convert the space to a regular Windows partition.

 

Hello Jeroen1000,

Thank you for using Acronis Products

Acronis Secure Zone can’t be encrypted, it’s just special hidden partition. Using Acronis True Image Home 2009 you can encrypt backup archives. Acronis True Image Home 2009 allows encrypting backup files with the industry-standard AES cryptographic algorithms: 128, 192 or 256-bit.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev