Acronis Secure Zone

Hi,

I set up Acronis Secure Zone on my D drive. This worked OK but when I attempted to make an image today I got a message saying that the secure zone was not set up and the Acronis Secure Zone could not be used. This does concern me as what would happen if I needed to restore an image but the Acronis Secure Zone couldn't be found, Very worrying

I have had to format the old Acronis Secure Zone, merge this partition with the rest of D then recreat the Acronis Secure Zone. Any help in understanding why this has happened and what can be done to prevent it happening again in the future will be much appreciated

 

No need to use a Secure Zone nowadays. It was a desirable feature in the days when the cost of acquiring a second hard drive was for those only with deep pockets. As you have found out, using an SZ is only adding one more thing that may go wrong with your Images. An alternative is to use an external drive to hold your Images, and keep that drive unplugged when not in use.

 

Is "D" ur internal drive or external?

Also there could be bad blocks or errors on ur Drive "D" therefore the ASZ was not created correctly.

After u formatted ur hard drive and re-created ASZ did u manage to successfully store a backup there?

 

D is an internal drive and Secure Zone was originally created sucessfully as I have made images and restored images from the secure zone without problem.
I have created and stored a new image in the newely made secure zone

 

Hello greshoff,

Thank you for using Acronis Disk Backup Software.

As I can understand now you are able to use Acronis Secure Zone to save backup images.

If the problem appears again, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum (or in this thread).

Please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post and attach the created report to your letter.

We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.

--
Oleg Churkin

 

Thank you for your reply. A quick question relating to the secure zone. Does one have to use the secure zone. If I make a backup image and store it in a folsder on my D drive. Can this be restored by pressing F11 (I think) on boot up to get into acronis then restore the image fronm the folder in D.

Hope this makes sense.

Martin

 

Hello Martin,

Thank you for your question.

We'd like to inform you that you no matter what storage device hosts your backups, you will be able to access them using Acronis Startup Recovery Manager provided that the device is supported by Acronis True Image and the device has supported file system. Therefore, you will certainly be able to access your backups on D: drive from Acronis Startup Recovery Manager by choosing this file on your D: drive.

If you have any further questions concerning our software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum (or in this thread).

Thank you.

--
Eugene Bogdanov

 

If a disk has any sectors that are bad, even if during formatting the the bad sectors where marked and they are not used by the file system, then ATI will not create a Secure Zone on that drive.

Supposedly this is to prevent bad blocks from being copied over.

It's not uncommon to have a brand new hdisk with a few sectors marked out as bad. So not everyone that buys ATI will be able to create a SZ on their machine.

This sure seems kind of goofy to me. I must have misunderstood something?

 

I think that the "Secure Zone" has to be on the system (boot) drive to take advantage of the features that are unique to the "Secure Zone" concept. This would include using the "Startup Recovery Manager" and the "Acronis Snap Restore" features.

To use "snap restore" the entire boot drive (not just a partition) has to be backed up to the "secure zone". Otherwise a restore from the secure zone is just like a restore from any other "backup location". The only difference is that it is a little more difficult to accidentally delete a backup from the secure zone than it is from the other "backup locations".

Note: Acronis makes a big deal out of the term "backup location". It is a good idea to become very familiar with the concept of "backup locations". I think that Acronis coined that term.

 

I agree with jackboyce, i think the secure must be on the same physical drive as your MFT.

I use the secure zone for quick restores in case of virus problems, I also save an image to my network drive and redundantly save another to a removable drive.

Before creating an image of HDD, i do everything I can to make it perfect... off line defrag... virus scan.... tune up system optimizer...spyware scans...etc

Each time I load a program that I feel I will keep.... I house clean for viruses and spyware and then do it all over again.... I only keep one perfect image but in three diff places redundancy is the key. so when I get a virus... i don't waste time trying to fix it... i reimage my drive. I also partition my drive-- one partition for the OS & programs and a second for all of my data.

 

greshoff,
If you want to use the option of pressing F11 at bootup to open Acronis, then you need to activate the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. In order for the Recover Manager to work, it requires the creation of the Secure Zone where part of its program files are stored. Secure zone should not be on an external drive.

Backups and Restores can be from the Secure Zone or from any other folder or drives where backup sets are restored.

As previously stated, many choose not to use either of these optional functions. Without the Secure zone, you can still boot from Windows or from the Recovery CD. You can still do backups and restores from either Windows or from the Recovery CD.

An important point is to be sure and creaate the Recovery CD. Bootup using the Recovery CD and perform actual backups and restores so you know the Recovery CD will work for you. Should you have a disk failure or want to upgrade toa large disk, the Recovery CD will the means by which this is accomplished.

Should you want to un-install the Secure zone or Recovery Manager, do so using the Acronis functions. You also should read more about "Secure Zone & Startup Recovery Manger" found in the Useful Forum Threads link below.