Try & Decide feature.

I have some concerns about this feature and have doubts whether I can in fact use it at all.

Background:- I use the secure zone to store backup images on a second internal drive for several reasons. The main one being that it is safer to have these images in a hidden drive rather than a visible drive. This applies the same whether a visible drive is internal or external.

Problem:- Using T&D takes over part of the secure zone and opens up the whole of this partition to possible infection and malware. I am not aware of any precautions that are built in to keep secure zone images infection free. This is especially important because one of the published advantages of T&D is to check things out before absorbing them into the main hard drive partition as they may indeed contain viruses or malware.

So the question is are my secure zone images less secure if I tried to use the T&D feature ?

In fact it may well not be possible for anyone who uses the secure zone to store backup images to actually use the handy T&D feature at all.
The secure zone by design keeps images on a FIFO basis and when it has been running for a while there is little unused space in the zone which could be used for T&D purposes.
In my own example I have 400MB unused at present and it seldom gets above 500MB. Is this big enough to run the T&D feature?
I started the T&D feature just as a test. I was surprised that I got no warning about insufficient space. Is it envisaged that T&D would start deleting some of my backup images to make room or what else should happen?
I saw in some TI notes that while T&D is in operation no other use can be made of the secure zone. So any scheduled backup to the zone would fail or would the T&D fail or what would happen?

I await further information on this subject as my initial conclusion is that I cannot use the T&D facility because it probably would fail and if it did not I could put my backups at risk.

Xpilot

 

According to Mustang's post here you have to use a secure zone, in any case I can't see any useful purpose as you have to decide whether you want to keep the software on first reboot. In my limited experience not many mainstream programs install without a reboot, including TrueImage

 

I'll have a look and see if T&D actually makes a tib file that it holds the 'virtual machine' in. If so, then the contagion fear would be minimal.

Colin