Acronis Zone Full with incremental backup

I am getting a Full Zone error using Incremental backup, but according to Incremental Backup description this should not be happening:

"When no space left in the Acronis Secure Zone, then the oldest full backup and all its subsequence backups are deleted to free up space."

Please help, I dont even know how to delete a file from Secure Zone, so I am really stuk.

 

Hi there,

I don't know why Acronis has made it so uncomfortable to delete files from the secure zone. All you can do is deleting the zone and create a new one.
But I've found a good solution for me:
The secure zone is a regular FAT32 partition. The only difference is that it has an unused partition table entry.
All you need is the Ext2 IFS driver for windows. After installation you will find a new entry in control panel 'IFS Drives'. With that tool you can (temporarily) assign a drive letter to the secure zone and access it with explorer (or better tools like Total Commander ;-) ).
Please watch out to delete .TIB files only (if you were using startup recovery manager).

Hope this helps, Rado

 

The solution is far more simple than that. Just create a new full image . The original full image will then be overwritten. Of course all the existing incrementals will be orphaned and will be overwritten in due course.

If you carefully read the bullet points in Chapter 3.3 of the user Guide it is set out there.

To keep things simple I run a secure zone that is on a slave drive and it is big enough to take all the FULL images that I need. So I do not have to mess with incrementals and the FIFO management works like a charm.
Apart from the added security this has the added benefit of unattended scheduled backups which can be implemented from the schedule Wizard with ease.

Xpilot

 

So, should you need to restore, using the F11 command at boot, the restore would take the image from your slave drive. Now you say: "it is big enough to take all the FULL images that I need", therefore, you would be able to make a selection of the image which you want to restore?

If you can make an ASZ on a slave drive, is it possible to do a Security Zone using a USB external drive? And schedule accordingly? In the affirmative, should the USB drive be unavailable on a scheduled time, would the backup be simply skipped?

 

I never use the F11 command at boot to initiate a restore. I have measured the time taken to start a restore using the start up from within Windows and also from the recovery CD. It is quicker using the CD and in the case of a main drive failure probably the only way to recover an archive. So I use the CD every time.

Images are identified in the secure zone by time and date stamps automatically. When the secure zone is selected in the recovery Wizard all the archive files are listed and thus one can choose which one to restore.

It is not a good idea to have a secure zone on an external hard drive. This is particularly true if the startup recovery manager is activated. The reason being that the MBR is modified and the computer will no longer boot if the external drive is not connected and active.

With TI Version 10 one can specify backup locations and I presume a USB drive could be one of those. It is possible to schedule backups to such Locations and specify how they should be managed.
As I am content with the Zone on a slave drive, which incidentally is many times more efficient than an external drive, I have not checked all the possibilities of scheduling to an external drive. A perusal of the user manual should help more than I can.

Xpilot

 

Hello mcongosto,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that this quote is incomplete. The complete rules for when Acronis True Image deletes the old backups in Acronis Secure Zone reads as follows:

Please notice the third paragraph, which describes the behavior you are getting. Therefore, the User's Guide recommends to recreate the full image from time to time, as Xpilot noted.

Please note that Acronis True Image does not provide an option for manually deleting backups in Acronis Secure Zone. The reason for that is so there was always a restorable backup available.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Hello mfabien,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please notice that it is not recommended to create Acronis Secure Zone on a detachable drive. Acronis Secure Zone was designed mainly for users who only have one hard drive, so they could have a safe place to store their backups. Please have a look at this FAQ entry for some details about creating Acronis Secure Zone on a detachable drive.
If the specified location for a scheduled backup is not available at the moment of the backup start, the procedure will be stopped, and the log entry will indicate an error.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

Marat,

I have been contemplating purchasing ATI and was somewhat shocked to read this post. I had hoped to backup files and save disk images to an external USB drive so that in case of a total HD failure the backup files or images would not be lost also. Is it feasible to use an external drive without creating a secure zone on it? Any reasons to not do that?

I must admit that I do not fully understand the utility of a secure zone and would appreciate any enlightenment.

John

 

That's probably how most of us keep our backups - on an external drive like any other file except it has a .tib extension and no secure zone. That way you can have the drive disconnected and out of harms way and you can also burn the backup images to dvd media for extra security. If the images are in a SZ only True Image can access them, i.e, you would not be able to burn them to dvd.

 

Thanks Ralphie; that makes a lot of sense to me and makes ATI sound like a workable solution.

John