Boot black screen after secure zone creation

This thread to inform you about a strange problem, not documented which happened to me recently. Hopefully it is now circumvented.
Environment:
Win XP SP2 running on a Dell Inspirion 8600 laptop 60 Go
Disk 0: disk C NTFS 58 Go
Disk 1: external 80 Go USB2 attached(new disk)
True Image 7.0 (build 634)
History:
I first created a bootable rescue media (CD Rom) then I created a Secure zone (39 Go) taken from disk 1. During this process, I checked the option to activate the startup recovery manager (press F11 during boot).
I then created an image of my system. Creation ended without problem. I was able to explore files from the secure zone.
I do not intend to poweron the external disk on every system power on as this external disk will be used only to back up files and in case of system partition recovery. Also, I want to move my laptop without the external disk attached.
Lateron during the first power on, system hung with a black screen (cursor blinking) after the power on self tests. It looks like the boot C disk is not available anymore.
After some brain storming, I realized that the external disk must be online in order to allow windows loading.
Finally, I erased the security zone and created it again but this time with the option : Do not activate the startup recovery manager.
Questions: 1) Did I misunderstand something here ?
2) Will the bootable rescue media (CD Rom) play the same be role as the startup recovery manager in case of system disk failure preventing window loading ?
Thanks Zac

 

1. The recovery Manager requires access to the drive that it is installed on (as you found out) in order to boot.

2. The boot disk is equivalent to the Recovery Manager.

 

Thank you for the clarifications. Closing the item.