creating Acronis Secure Zone

Hi. I have a Dell Dimension 3000 desktop and I understand that it's hard disk has a partition that contains the DELL PC Restore image file. Can I create the Acronis Secure Zone on this same partition where the DELL PC Restore is? Will it affect my ability to restore my DELL desktop using the DELL PC Restore?

Robert

 

Hello Robert,

Thank you for choosing Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/).

You may create Acronis Secure Zone on any hard disk you wish including the disk with your special DELL partition. It will not affect your partition and will not mess the things. You will be able to restore from this DELL partition as well as from Acronis Secure Zone.

Thank you.
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Ilya Toytman

 

hi, thanks for your reply, I just read from the Dell Support website that DELL PC Restore will not work properly if the Master Boot Record is changed. If I create the Acronis Secure Zone, will it change the Master Boot Record?

thanks,

R

 

Hello Robert,

If you activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager it will change you MBR. Acronis Secure Zone itself doesn't change MBR and you may create it without any problems.

Thank you.
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Ilya Toytman

 

thanks for your reply, i really appreciate it. I have another question. If I create the Acronis Secure Zone on the C drive, NTFS partition, and create an image of this same partition (where my windows XP, programs, and data are),when I restore this image back to the NTFS partition (using the acronis bootable CD), will it delete my acronis secure zone?

thanks in advance,

robert

 

The SecureZone is a new partition that is created by taking space from some other partition, in this case, your C partition. When you restore an image in the SecureZone to C, only the C partition will be overwritten. The other partitons including the SecureZone will not be changed.

 

thanks for your reply! i have now successfully created my first image! so sorry to be this excited, but I am a beginner to this kind of thing, and what compelled to try this application is so that I won't have to reinstall all my programs (and doing that microsoft activation) whenever something goes wrong with my pc.

anyway, I have successfully created the Acronis Secure Zone and created an image of my C: drive in it. While I don't see any reason why I would want to restore this image now to my PC (my computer is still working fine), how do I know if the image file created is working properly, that is, not corrupted... I read some posts in this forum about corrupt image files. Is there a way for me to verify the integrity of my newly created image?

thanks!

robert

 

Hello Robert,

Please launch Acronis True Image and choose the "Check Image" tool. Indicate that your image is stored in Acronis Secure Zone and wait while Acronis True Image checks its integrity.

Thank you.
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Ilya Toytman

 

Hello Robert,

First of all use TI's "Check Image" feature to verify your image. After that, go through the process of restoring an image up to, but not including clicking, the "Proceed" button. If eveything's o.k. up to that point then, when the time comes, it's almost certain that you will be able accomplish a good restore.

Regards

 

hi all, thanks for all your replies; I successfully restored the image file I saved in Acronis Secure Zone; and I'm so glad, this thing really saves me a lot of time (from trying to do all the reinstallations, including the microsoft activation where I have to activate everytime); now, I can really "compute with confidence!"

there was nothing wrong about my computer, but I was really curious in finding out if the acronis secure zone and its image file of my drive C will really work; and it did! thanks for all your help!

robert

 

Hi mdj17,

You have a right to be excited. You now know that you are protected in the event of a bad virus or spyware problem, etc.
Having a good backup system makes computing much more fun and far less worrisome.
OK, you are all set for things that screw up your software, but if your hard drive were to fail, the SecureZone would go with it. For complete insurance, you should make an image to some external media or device. An image on CD-R or DVD+RW disks or an external hard drive are possibilities.

 

thanks for your reply. how do I create a back up of my acronis secure zone? and which back-up method is more reliable? CDs or external hard disk? I am thinking of buying just a 5-gig external hardisk solely for this backing up of my acronis secure zone, but do you think CDR's would be fine? and can you recommend a good external hard disk proven to be compatible with Acronis True Image?

thanks,

robert

 

Hello Robert,

Glad to hear Acronis True Image worked fine for you.

It would be better not to back up Acronis Secure Zone to another storage but just store image there. You may either use external drive or CDs. Probably external drive is more convinient because you will be able to explore the image from it, not only restore. Acronis True Image should work with any external drives.

Thank you.
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Ilya Toytman