Acronis True Image Echo and Pointsec

I have few questions to see if they can be answered. I've been testing Acronis TI Echo and been trying to get the F11 option at startup to work with Pointsec. Those familiar with Pointsec, it uses it own login screen. When both are active the F11 shows up twice, before the Pointsec login, and afterwards. In order to get access to the hard drive you have to authenticate first with Pointsec, so my only option is to hit F11 the second time it shows up. After hitting F11 I get a Linux boot error.

First question. Is it possible to have both options working some way or the F11 option is out of the question? Also will the secure zone work properly with pointsec, since they both have encryption.

Second question. I used the F11 the first time it showed up and able to retrieve the backups. However when the pc was restored, it look like it removed pointsec as the icon is not the taskbar anymore and there was no pointsec login. Pointsec was still in add/remove programs. I uninstalled it and then reinstalled to re-encrypt the drive and to restore the Pointsec login. Is all this necessary to restore pointsec or is there another way?

Sorry for the lengthy post. I've looked everywhere online and can't seem to find an answer.

 

Anyone with an insight on this please advise. Thanks.

 

I'm not a fan of Acronis, but I'll answer your question for you.

When you install Pointsec, it will replace the standard Windows MBR boot code with a custom MBR that allows you to access the Pointsec boot-up log-in menu.

Unfrotunately, if you then install Acronis with its Secure Zone, Acronis will overwrite the existing (Pointsec-centric) MBR with its own. You will then be unable to access the Pointsec boot menu. To get Pointsec to work again, you need to download a tool that can put the Pointsec MBR back in place. Of course, once you do that, you will then not be able to access the Acronis Secure Zone at boot up.

When you boot into Windows and make a backup from within the booted Windows system, the backup file will NOT be encrypted (unless the backup software itself has an option to encrypt the backup).

To backup and encrypted volume, complete with its Pointsec encrypted data, you need to boot the PC with the Acronis boot CD and backup using that. Just keep in mind that Acronis will not recognize the filesystem format, so will need to backup every single sector on the volume - whether it is used or not.