How secure is Acronis Secure Zone??

Hello everyone,

This is a question regarding Acronis True Image Home 2011. Assuming
that I've a single sata HDD of say 500GB and I create a password protected Acronis Secure Zone of around 20GB on the same HDD,
how secure is the Acronis Secure Zone from the most nasty/dangerous malwares out there??

Can they destroy the data in the password protected Acronis Secure Zone or is there an additional step to be done??

Please help.

 

Good question!

 

exus69,

A Secure Zone for backups on the same HD as the OS? I'd be more concerned about HD failure.

 

When I used Acronis I never used it for the reason Brian K pointed out. It's fast, sure, but you are always better off with a portable or offsite image.

 

Hi Brain,

I am not sure about the above, as Acronis True Home is not just an imaging software only. It has other tools too.

One of the tools is called, "Try&Decide", which is similar to Shadow Defender and Returnil.

It also has a tool for Cloud Backup, with 250GB space.

I am not sure what the Secure Zone does, it most probably is like Truecrypt, but I am not sure, and I would like to know more about it.

It is full of gems, and thus for just imaging software it is probably bloated, but with the other tools included, most probably it is not.

I bought it for $20 USD on Bidsjour.com for the 2011 version, while the 2012 version was out for beta testing. It has one month free upgrade period for major version. The 2012 version came out after 1 month and couple of days later, so no free upgrade for me.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

KOR,

Here is a nice summary of the Acronis Secure Zone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronis_Secure_Zone

I've never used it. I think it's used by those who don't have a backup HD.

 

But the above link does not mention about ASZ effectiveness in defending against dangerous malwares.

Please help

 

Is your Secure Zone on the first or second HD?

 

As I said in my first post, I've created the Acronis Secure Zone of 20 GB
on my single 500GB HDD.

 

As you have created a password protected secure area on your hardrive and considering the backup is a single file that comprises the contents of the C drive (plus any incremental backups) I can't really see why you would worry about malware affecting it directly. I think its the least of your problems.

Personally I cant see the point of creating a secure area for Acronis backups on your primary drive. I suggest you either add a second harddrive or an external drive and backup to these as has already been mentioned.
The way you have done it now will all allow you to restore your computer in the even that you have a virus or somehow your OS or a program gets irreparably messed up but if your harddrive fails then your backup wont help as you would have lost it because of the HD failure.
Same as there is no point in backing up any data to the same drive.

 

I would also like to know the answer to your question.

How safe is secure zone if using the try & decide mode as a type of sandbox or virtual machine? Is it an effective solution that offers adequate protection?

I do my backups to an external drive and would advise against backing on the same drive for the reasons listed previously.

 

exus69,

The Secure Zone is just a FAT32 partition with the Partition Type altered to 0xBC. I assume Acronis calls it "Secure" because it is not seen in Windows and therefore prevents you from deleting files. But as far as malware infecting its boot sector, it's just a FAT32 partition and a rootkit could infect it. I don't think image files can be infected by viruses so it doesn't matter where they are stored. As long as they aren't stored on the same HD as the source partition.

 

Thx everyone for your inputs Highly appreciate

 

Dear Brian,

Thank you for correcting my misconceptions about Acronis Secure Zone. No wonder you are the expert.

Best regards,

KOR!