Clarification about Secure Zone

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by rodrimf, Apr 16, 2007.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. rodrimf

    rodrimf Registered Member

    Joined:
    Apr 16, 2007
    Posts:
    3
    I am new to True Image. I have a Dell laptop with 2 HDDs. Ine fixed internal 40GB and one swappable 40GB (sharing the same bay with the DVD/CD unit). My main drive is 75% full, I can spare most of the space of the 2nd drive. I want to have an easy and fast way to recover al my OS, programs settings, e-mail, and documents in case I loose my internal drive. both drives have 1 single NTFS partition (the 1st one also has the EISA config partition).
    I am testing TI to do that, so I decided that a full "My PC" backup was the way to go and I made space available in the second drive (D:). It took 20 minutes or so to do the backup. Then reading some of the documentation, I understood that the secure zone SZ was required to recover and to enable recovery manager. So I decided to delete the backup I did earlier to release space, and I created a 31 GB SZ on the second drive. I noticed the SZ is created using FAT32, not NTFS. I started again a full MY PC backup to the SZ, but now it took 4 hours!!!
    Can somebody explain me:
    1- Is SZ really needed to recover the image(s) full+ incremental even if my first hard drive crashes and I get a brand new replacement one?
    2- If it is required, any explanation why my 1st backup to NTFS partition took only 20 minutes while the second one to the SZ took 4 hours? !!!: thumbd:
    3- If it is not required what is the best recommended practice for what I want to accomplish and what is the SZ for? The documentation does not provide lots of details about SZ and what is best.
    4- I also read some threads in which people say that SZ should be in the primary drive... Does not make sense, I want to protect against hard disk crash or data lost in my main drive due to any failure in that drive. AM I missing something?

    Thanks
     
  2. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2005
    Posts:
    4,751
    1. No, possibly the original idea was to give people a way to create a second partition to store images in if they only had a single drive with a single partition. As you pointed out it is not really secure if the disk is on goes bad but it is secure in the sense you can't fool with the info without being in TI.

    2. If you created it on the second drive which is a plug-in-bay on your machine it may not be as fast but it seems way too long. No real idea.

    3. See 1. Also, if you want to use the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager the images have to be in a SZ. The ASRM will modify your MBR. You don't want the SZ to be on a removable disk because the system will look for it on bootup and if it isn't there it can cause problems. The SZ used to be a method for automatically managing the number of backups because it will delete old backups according to a set of rules. However, I believe the Backup Locations feature in TI10 now fills this need. I never use a SZ or the ASRM. If you have an archive in the SZ you can't copy it elsewhere - the archives can only be managed by TI.

    4. See 3.

    The SZ is always formatted FAT32 and this causes no problems.
     
  3. rodrimf

    rodrimf Registered Member

    Joined:
    Apr 16, 2007
    Posts:
    3
    Seekforever, thanks a lot for the answers. They clarified several things.
    An additional question:
    In case of 1st hard disk crash, can I simply rely on a TI bootable CD and after the system has booted swap the CD drive and place the drive that has my backups, either SZ or in my regular NTFS partition?
     
  4. DwnNdrty

    DwnNdrty Registered Member

    Joined:
    Mar 28, 2007
    Posts:
    3,335
    Location:
    Florida - USA
    Your situation may be better suited to doing Clones instead of making Backup images if the Dell can boot off the drive in the CD bay. I agree that the SZ (including the SRM) is not a good idea nowadays. If you also want to do Backup images, invest in an external usb drive that is large enough (I don't think you can buy anything smaller than 160Gb these days) to hold several Images as well as other files you care to keep on it.
     
  5. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

    Joined:
    Oct 31, 2005
    Posts:
    4,751
    You should be able to (assuming you can swap the drives without turning off the power) since the bootable CD rescue environment is memory-resident Linux and doesn't require the CD once loaded. You certainly would want to test this!

    They should be in a regular NTFS partiton since the SZ shouldn't be on a removable drive.

    As DwnNdrty said, another option is to use an external USB drive.

    In your post you said, "can I simply rely on a TI bootable CD". You can't rely on anything to do with backups until you have made a backup, validated it and done a restore. Until you have done a restore you only have done half the job and too many people wait until disaster strikes before they try their first restore and find out something doesn't work as it should.
     
  6. GroverH

    GroverH Registered Member

    Joined:
    May 10, 2006
    Posts:
    2,405
    Location:
    Massachusetts, USA
    Check this link for
    Acronis Secure Zone and Startup recovery manager
    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=29880

    Have you considered replacing your current primary drive with a larger drive so you could retain the old as an additional security. Of course, you still need to keep current on your full disk backup images.
     
  7. rodrimf

    rodrimf Registered Member

    Joined:
    Apr 16, 2007
    Posts:
    3
    All, thanks for your answers.
    The SZ definetelly is weird. I deleted it and went back to my MTFS single partition on the 2nd drive. I started again a full MyPC backup, expecting some long 4 hour time to complete as it happened with the last one done to the SZ on the same drive. Initial stimate came as 1:15. But it went down and finally my backup took around 30 minutes!!

    I guess the lesson is stay out of SZ if you don't really need it and you cannot set it up in your primary drive.

    Second test I did, just in case. I downloaded the trial version of Ghost. Cleaned up my second drive partition and disabled the the TI services. I made a full backup using Ghost and it started with an estimate 96 minutes pointing to the same NTFS partition; after 45 minutes the estimate was 3 hours and a half. After other 15 minutes I did not see the estimate coming down, so I simply aborted it and removed Ghost.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
    By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.