Full Backup not in Secure Zone.

If I understand the Secure Zone correctly, I must have one installed on my hard disk (C:/) to be able to utilize restore (I do not currently have a secure zone), but does the full Backup have to reside there as well, or can it reside on an external drive. The external drive is where I currently have one.

 

Hello faw30,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

You can create Acronis Secure Zone on any internal drive you have. Even after you install it you may choose to store the images not only there but on ordinary partitions as well. However, if you create full image and incrementals to it all these images should reside either on single folder or in Acronis Secure Zone. You cannot store them on different places. If you create the full image in Acronis Secure Zone you need to create incrementals in Acronis Secure Zone as well.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

No, you do not need the Secure Zone to do a restore. The feature is optional. Just make sure you have built the recovery CD.

 

Creating a Secure Zone (SZ) and imaging to it has a couple of benefits, namely:

1. Your image is safe from other Windows applications, Viruses and malware.
2. TI can automatically manage the maximum number of incremental images that can be created in the SZ.

The associated Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (SRM) is primarily intended for notebook users who may not have the capability to boot from the Acronis bootable rescue media (floppy or CD). However, be aware that activating the SRM comes with a couple of potential pitfalls:

1. It will overwrite your Master Boot Record (MBR) and hence cripple any multi-boot capability that you may have on your computer (e.g. Dell hidden Recovery and Diagnostic partitions, dual boot Operating Systems etc.).
2. If the associated SZ has been created on an external HD then this needs to be connected and switched on whenever booting the computer otherwise the system will lock up.

So the message is - use the SZ if you feel it would be benificial but think very carefully about whether to accept the default option to also activate the SRM.

Regards

 

So I just boot the computer with the recovery cd in and then I can restore the hard drive which is currently on an external drive. What happens if somethng doesn't go right. Am I stuck until the restore is sucessful?

 

Hello faw30,

You can restore the image from the external drive as well as from Acronis Secure Zone after you boot with Acronis Bootable CD. There should be no problem and the wizards are the same as under Windows.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

I am in the process of restoring my image from and external drive. The file system that I am restoring is NTFS, but in operation 3 of 4 (Creating Partition) the "Type:" is 188(Acronis Secure Zone) and the File System: is FAT32. I believe this should also be NTFS but how do I change it??

 

You can't and there is no need to. Although the SZ is a FAT32 partition, the restored image will be NTFS.

Regards

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

Hello faw30,

Menorcaman is correct. The image includes the information of your file system, it can be stored anywhere, on any file system. When you restore it you get the partition with the same file system you had previously on it.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova