Do I need ASZ when I backup to external drive?

Using ATI Home-2009, I backup System Image (weekly) and Email (daily) to an external hard drive. Going to "Protection State/System Information" it says that my system is unprotected as:
System volume backup - Not created
Acronis Bootable Media - Not created
Acronis Startup Recovery Manager - Not activated

As I am backing up to an external hard disk, are any, or all, of these necessary? Disk space on C: is not a problem as I have 54 GB available on a 64GB hard disk. TIA

Dennis

 

You don't need the SZ for anything. Don't use it and dont use the Startup recovery manager -- you'd be just a begging for problems that you don't need to beg for. You're better off doing any restores from the bootCD. Be sure and give it a test run.

The SZ and expecially the Startup recovery manager are known to cause serious problems when they cause probs.

Some folks have found a use for the SZ but it's original intended purpose is obsolete and contrary to the basic principles of data backup. Back many versions ago, it was originally intended as a way to sell ATI to folks that had only one harddrive -- how do you backup a harddrive if you only have one harddrive? Well, you jsut back it up onto itself -- now there's security for ya . If the harddrive with the SZ on it fails, you're screwed; the SZ won't be available for restores. So, if you have only one harddrive, then instead of using the SZ, buy a second -- their really cheap these days. Acronis apparently kept the SZ becasue the coding had been done tand they've tried to market it as some kind of added feature in ATI. It's really an old leftover whose history is as supect as it's alleged purpose.

And don't fiddle with the SZ. If you already have, get rid of it, that's my recommendation. don't use; forget that Acronis ever mentioned it.

As for the goofy alerts in ATI, they are very badly thought out and you can use the program with some confidence if you use it simply and ignore the whacky alerts from ATI. I like to think of them as a kind of sardonic sarcasm onthe part of ATI designers, but I really think either the programmers were on really good drugs or the marketers got control over program design, a much more common and damaging occurence.

 

The only one you really need is the Acronis Bootable media. This is often called the TI rescue CD.
You should test it at least as far as making sure that it can boot ok and see your internal and external drives. It comes into its own if you ever have to recover or replace your main drive for any reason.

I have an inbuilt dislike for the Start up recover manager. It is not a basic requirement and can be safely ignored.

I get confused by some of the Acronis terminology even though I have used it for years. I do not use V2009 but I guess that Systems Volume Backup means a backup of your OS drive. Because you are already doing this to an external drive you should be safe in ignoring this message. Unless of course you want to make another backup of your backup, depending on your overall strategy this may be a good idea.

Xpilot

 

Thanks "shieber & Xpilot"

What you've both said tallys with pieces of other posts I've seen on this board, which is why I asked. Having just had a well known backup utility totally trash my XP-Home, I don't want to take any chances, no matter how much free HD space I have.

By "boot CD", "shieber", I take it your referring to what "Xpilot" calls "Acronis Bootable media or TI rescue CD. So, first chance I get, I'll use Acronis Bootable Media to make a boot CD, and test it to see if it works and recognizes both the C: and F: (external) drives.

Thanks a ton,
Dennis

 

For a more comprehensive test of the TI boot CD, AKA, rescue CD, rescue media, recovery CD, etc) boot up the PC with it and create an archive to your USB drive with it. This will show if it is truly happy and is a no-risk operation. The recovery environment on the CD is Linux and just because Windows works doesn't mean the Linux environment works. If you restore the active partition from Windows, the PC will load the Linux environment off your HD so it is essential you know the Linux stuff works on your system.

After you've done that, validate the archive with the CD version. This will show it can accurately read the archive into RAM and recalculate the thousands of checksums properly by comparing them with the ones stored in the archive when it was created. It is also a pretty good RAM and disk-subsystem test too since any hardware issues will likely cause the validate to fail.

Absolute best test of the Linux recovery environment is to put in a spare HD and do a restore to it and then boot up the sytem.

 

Hello Onlinenow,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image Home 2009

Acronis does not recommend creating the Acronis Secure Zone on a detachable drive. If you activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager and then for some reason disconnect the drive Acronis Secure Zone resides on, your computer may boot with a long delay or not boot at all. You will need to either reconnect the drive with the Acronis Secure Zone or fix the master boot record (MBR).

I may recommend you create full system partition backup and create Acronis bootable disc. In case of system crash you can easily boot from boot CD and restore the system.

Best regards,
--
Dmitry Nikolaev