Cannot create Acronis secure zone

Congratulations! That all looks correct now. I trust that you rebooted before creating the screen shots.

Now that Vista is booting entirely from its own partition, you can delete the Boot partition.

1. Using Vista Disk Management, delete the D: (Boot) partition.
2. Copy the files from the R: and I: partitions to temporary storage on your external disk.
3. Delete all of the remaining partitions on the disk, leaving only the Vista partition and the rest as unallocated space. Don't forget to delete the extended partition container if you see "Free Space" in the graphic.

Next, decide on how much space you want in the Vista partition and how much in the Images partition.

4. Extend or Shrink the Vista partition to its desired size.
5. Create a new I: partition that either fills the rest of the disk or that leaves 100 MB unallocated space after I: for a future Secure Zone *(read ahead to decide if you need a Secure Zone)
6. Copy back any files from the external disk to the I: partition

Now you can create a full-disk image of this new layout.

That's everything except for creating a Secure Zone and activating the ASRM. You can either try that again, this time from Windows, or wait a couple of days for a new and different approach. Acronis has released a new build for TI 2009 that can boot into the Acronis rescue environment without requiring a Secure Zone at all. They posted the new build yesterday but withdrew it because it had a bug where it wouldn't recognize some people's valid serial numbers. It may be fixed shortly and then you could download it -- your choice.

P.S. If you want to keep the boot partition for backup purposes, create an image of it and save the image.

 

That's a pretty close description of how I manage backups. On the laptop I normally keep an end-of-month full image (except that I exclude the backup partition from the image) and a "Patch Tuesday" incremental image done right before installing the monthly Microsoft Update patches. Long-term backups are stored on external USB drives; one at home and one at the office.

Your current image size of 64.3 GB is probably because you are creating full-disk images that also include backup images stored on the laptop. So you have backups of your backups. In the future you should exclude the "Images" partition and only back up the Vista partition. Those images will be smaller. Since you have about 50 GB of used space on the Vista partition, the compressed image size should be about 35 GB. To keep two you'd need 70 GB of storage space. If you allow a little more for future growth in size, you'd probably want to choose a size of 100 GB or more for the "Images" partition.

Personally I would recommend against storing backups in a Secure Zone because they're hidden from the operating system and it is difficult to get at your image files if you want to copy one of them to your external drive, delete one, etc. Instead I would keep them in a visible partition where they may be easily managed. But that's just me. The soon to be released new build of TI 2009 will allow access to the Secure Zone for file management tasks, so you can factor that info into your decision-making process.

 

I like that.. I may soon adopt some key parts of your strategy. - Thanks for sharing...
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Yes, I agree with all of the above. It had temporarily slipped my mind that I was making a backup of a backup. 100 GB's I am sure will be plenty for me, because I externally archive all of my photos and other multi-media, and even most of my office documents.
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I don't have any great desire for storing the actual backups in the secure zone, The I: partition will be fine for that. - As far as to whether or not I really have a strong wish to have a secure zone at all, I do, because of the ability to recover from a serious disaster without needing any recovery disk. - I would prefer not to wait for the new release, but if we have much more trouble, I don't want to spend a whole lot more time on it, either. - You had noted before that another key, other than F11, could be assigned to the zone, so I would really like to attempt that, as well.
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Do you happen to know what method the new build will use for making restore options available? I'm not clear on what will be different.

Alternately, I could always google the subject, as to avoid pressuring you to write me my own personal a user guide.. hee-hee

 

I have not tried to delete the D: (Boot) partition yet, because Windows still blocks access to copying the files and folders that reside there. - I did manage to copy most of them that Windows Copy failed with, using Backup software "Syncbackse pro", but I really would like to know how to gain the privileges needed to copy BCD, Bcd.Log and BootStat.dat files, that Syncbackse Pro cannot copy. I signed in as the administrator, but still now luck. I don't have a need for the copies, I just want to know how it can be done.

Black = Exact Match
Red = Newer or mismatch
Gray = Older
Blue = Orphan (does not exist on other side)

 

Paul (MudCrab) and I were discussing that in posts #70-73 and 75-76. The new method apparently is pretty much the same as the old method. You would press the F11 key* when the PC boots in order to enter the Acronis rescue environment. In the old method, the PC would then load the rescue operating system from the Secure Zone, where its files were stored. In the new method, the files are stored in the Windows partition instead of in the Secure Zone. So you don't need a Secure Zone to have the bootable rescue environment.

Actually, I like that idea because it avoids the need to create an additional partition on the disk. Its drawback is that if the Windows partition is missing or so badly corrupted that the rescue files cannot be located, then the recovery feature is unavailable. You would then need the rescue CD to recover. However, with USB flash drives being so inexpensive, a secondary recovery method is to use the Acronis Bootable Media Builder to create a bootable USB flash drive. If you have a small drive lying around (the files only need 30 MB so any old drive will work) then you can carry the drive with you when traveling to use if the primary method fails.

A couple of other methods you can try are:
1. Boot into Vista's safe mode (press F8 while booting to enter safe mode) to see if the files are unlocked in safe mode.
2. Copy them from the command prompt while booted from the Vista recovery CD using the methods in post #84.
3. Or, the most elegant method is to double-click on one of your .tib files that contains a backup of the D: partition. Browse into the archive and copy the files out. The files in the backup archive will not be locked.

*Information about changing the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager to use something other than the F11 key is in this Acronis Knowledge Base article. Do this before activating the ASRM.

 

Good morning Mark. Thanks again for such easy to understand answers to my questions. Hope you'll forgive me for having a few hours ago, taken a couple steps out of order.

(1) I booted to the Acronis disk and tested to see if the booting troubles had dissappeared now when selecting "Windows" from the first Acronis screen. That does in fact no longer cause any problems.

(2) I then activated the secure zone using the Acronis disk and that also worked fine.

(3) Then I tested the F11 function while restarting and that also work fine. Also I more than once let Windows restart normally and that also now works fine.

(4) Then I restarted again and pushed the F11 key, and had no problems booting into the Acronis Environment. I also tried exiting and repeating all that a few times, with success wheter I chose to boot into windows or the TI. Both always worked fine.

(5) Then I used TI to copy individual files and and made a backup of those BCD files. I received a "Files backup successfully" msgbox, so I'm guess that it did infact succeed with that. Later I will confirm that using my "Beyond Compare" software, and will post back.

(6) Then I restarted again, pushed F11 and I used TI that way to make another full backup to my large usb external. that is almost finished

Well, before I even finished witting this post, the Ti backup completed successfully. But unfortunately, when I exited TI, became paused with a black screen. -- I will leave it that way for awhile, so that possibly you might have time to post to make a suggestion as to what to do. I was thinking a three finger salute was appropriate.

The booting to a small usb flash drive I would like to set up; as I do have an extra one, and would like to have that as an option. But also I should say that for me, it's actually easier to lug around my laptop with the Acronis disk in the DVD drive, as apposed to keeping track of a flash drive.

I'm off to grab a quick breakfast now and take my daughter to school and then do some actual work, (of the type that pays the bills.. hee-hee.) I may or may not be back later today. Thanks again so very much for all of your help and well written explanations.

 

Glad that's sorted. I don't have an explanation for the former behavior other than that there are sometimes weird issues on Vista machines that have multiple BCDs in different partitions. I helped a guy on the ThinkPads forum with a Lenovo laptop that was booting into the recovery partition instead of into Vista, and it was a similar issue. His Vista BCD was missing the links to the C: partition, so Vista's bootmgr, when the boot failed, went hunting for other BCD copies on the disk and found one in the recovery partition, which it then happily booted. Fixing the links in the main BCD fixed the problem.

Yes, just reboot it. It should be OK.

You're quite welcome; I've enjoyed meeting you and I always learn something new from these exercises. It looks like you've got your issues resolved and a good backup plan implemented, so that's what counts.