Confused: Secure Zone vs backup?

I've read the entire manual, and I still don't understand the relationship between the Secure Zone and the Backup Archives.

A corresponding question: what's the difference (and relationship of) Acronis Startup Recovery Manager & Restore Data Manager?

My goal: in the event of a total windows wipe-out, to be able to restore my computer without reformatting and reinstalling all my programs (as I've had to do in the past).
To date, I've installed TI 10, and backup up my entire hard drive (C) to an external hard drive.
Using the program and reading the manual, it says to set up Secure Zone on your computer's hard drive (C). Re: backing up, it says you can use an external hard drive.
I thought maybe Secure Zone was just the operating system files, so followed the steps to do that on my hard drive, but it looked like it was going to require the entire size of the used portion of my hard drive (@50GB). Obviously, I don't want to devote half my hard drive to a copy.
Also, the manual says you can only set up ONE Secure Zone -- so if I DID use the C drive, what would be the point of having an external hard drive.


Could somebody explain this to me?
thanks so much!

 

First, the Secure Zone (SZ) is not necessary to make images with TI. The Secure Zone allows somebody who has only one large C drive, that is, only one partition on their physical drive, setup a partition to store archives. (You cannot use the partition that is being restored as a storage place for the archive since the first thing that happens is that the partition is deleted and there goes your image.)

To create a needed backup partition all you have to do is start TI and tell it to create a SZ and it creates the storage partition without any special partitioning software and knowledge on the part of the user.

SZ is a bit of a misnomer. The partition is hidden and you cannot accidently delete any of your backups from it but it suffers from a significant weakeness - if your drive dies and the SZ is on that drive, your backups die with it.

Some people like the SZ because it will delete backups based on some rules found in the User Guide so they can setup a suitable size and not have to worry about deleting old backups to save space.

Since the backups in the SZ can only be managed by TI you cannot copy them to another device or delete them using Windows Explorer. Also, when TI validates an image in the SZ it validates ALL of them and this can take a lot of time if there are a lot of images (TI9 anyway, TI10?).

It is possible to get around the SZ being on the drive being protected by setting it up on a second HD but if you don't want the autodelete functionality why bother, just make your backups to the other internal or external disk and you can copy them to DVD or wherever else you want.

The TI Startup Recovery Manager which allows you to restore on bootup with the press of a key relies on the image being in the SZ.

I never use the SZ, I much prefer to write the backups to a second HD and manage them with Windows Explorer.

 

That just about covers it and I agree - I also do not use the SZ and store my Images on an external drive - in fact more than one external drive.

 

Thanks so much --
I was concerned that I was leaving out some critical element needed to restore a complete image of y our computer. I've had too many total computer crashes over the years where I haven't even been able to open windows and have spent days reinstalling and tweaking my programs.

So am I correct in understanding that, even if windows won't function, I can get into Acronis using the boot cd and restore the complete image back up?

 

Yes, the Backup, Recover and Clone features are on the CD. Just be sure that when you boot with the CD that it will see your external drive. Some users have problems in that the chipset on their external is not supported.

 

Yes - I did a test run of booting from the cd, and I could see & access my ext. hard drive.

thanks so much!

 

Vunderbar ... as the commercial says, "you're good to go".

 

I have backed up to an external drive but I would also like to back up to the Secure Zone. Help files indicate this can be done but I cannot find how to do it. It does not show up in the explorer list when I back up. Can someone tell me how to do it.

 

If you didn't, validate an archive using the TI boot CD. This will increase the confidence to about as good as you can without doing an actual restore.

 

Hello jvtaylor,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for the delayed response.

Please note that in order to store backup archive to Acronis Secure Zone it should be selected from the drives tree. Please check the screen shot on the page 29 in the Acronis True Image 10.0 Home User's Guide. Pay attention to the fact that no file name required if you store backup to Acronis Secure Zone (as well as to Backup Location).

If there is no Acronis Secure Zone on the computer you will be prompted to create one. Please refer to chapter 9 "Managing Acronis Secure Zone" to find the detailed instruction on how to create Acronis Secure Zone.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov