Secure zone information

I just purchased True Image 9 and made my first image to the Secure Zone.
Would you mind telling me this:
How do I confirm that the image file actually exists? If I go into the Recovery wizard and hilight "Secure Zone," no file name shows up, so how can I be sure that it's there? I can see that the remaining space is less than the full size of the Secure Zone, but that's not sufficient proof. I want to see additonal informaion about the image file, such as date and time of creation.
Also, I want to be able to copy this file to a DVD, but I do not know how to go about doing this, since I can't see it. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong because I don't know the application well enough. Can you please explain this to me?

 

I don't have an answer for you regarding the SZ as I don't use it, but IMHO, you will be better off using a second hard drive to store your images. If it is a desktop you are using, the second hard drive can be installed either as a Slave or in the Secondary channel. If your computer is a laptop OR if you do not want to open the case (if it is a desktop), get an external usb hard drive - large hard drives are relatively cheap now. After saving the images on the second or external drive, you can burn the images to DVD media for extra security.

 

“I want to see additonal informaion about the image file, such as date and time of creation.”
I don’t use the ASZ either, but I think if you go to the next step, you should see the date(s) of the images in the ASZ.

“Also, I want to be able to copy this file to a DVD”
You can’t. That’s why it’s a Secure Zone; it’s safe from the OS. You can’t see the image, move it, delete it etc..

 

What I think I'm discovering about the "Secure Zone" is kind of maddening, if true. It is secure in the sense that the user or other software cannot directly affect it. But it is NOT secure in the sense of being free of possible corruption, e.g. bad blocks. But whereas on an ordinary "non-secure" disk, if you get corruption, there's a means of correcting it, what happens if the disk within the secure zone is corrupted? Well, you can't access it, so you can do nothing to correct the problem. Your only alternative is to ditch the "Secure Zone," run chkdsk on the part of disk that _used_ to be Oh So Secure, and then reconstitute the "Secure Zone," with all the same InSecurities!

At least this is what I think happened to me a few weeks ago and has again happened today. The result of using the Secure Zone seems to be that you are made vulnerable to being bereft of ANY backup, during the interval between eliminating it to fix the corruption, setting it back up again (if like me you are dumb enough to use the Insecure Zone again), and then finally making a FIRST backup.

If this scenario is not what's playing out, could someone tell me what it means when read errors occur with the message that the recipient disk is full. Sounds like a corruption issue in the Insecure Zone to me.

Stephen R. Diamond

 

Hello Faith007,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please make sure that you use the latest build (2337) of Acronis True Image 9.0 which is available at: http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/updates/

To get access to updates you should create an account at:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/
then log in and use your serial number to register your software.

Could you please make screen shots all of your steps during the image creation to Acronis Secure Zone?

If you are not familiar with making screen shots, please read the below step-by-step instructions.

- Get to the window which you want to make a screen shot of;
- Hit the (Alt+)PrintScreen button on your keyboard;
- Run Paint usually available in Start\Programs\Accessories or another graphics application;
- Choose Paste command in Edit menu;
- Save the result picture with JPEG format being preferable.

Please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please create an account, then log in and submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Please be aware that Acronis True Image has the unique ability to create a hidden protected partition on the hard disk drive - Acronis Secure Zone which is inaccessible by the operating system and applications.

So if you create an image to Acronis Secure Zone, you are not able to copy the image files to DVD. You should create the image once again.

Please note that the current version of Acronis True Image doesn’t write to DVD directly, instead it utilizes third party UDF packet DVD writing software.

You can find more information on how to write your images to DVD in this FAQ article.

Please also note that the ability to write images to DVD directly will be implemented in the future builds/versions of a particular software, but exact time frame is not decided yet.

Thank you.
--
Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

Hello Stephen,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please be aware that if you have bad blocks on your hard drive, Acronis Secure Zone can be corrupted.

Yes, you are correct. When you run Windows chkdsk utility on your hard drive, Acronis Secure Zone is inaccessible for such utilities. However, if you delete Acronis Secure Zone and run chkdsk to fix bad blocks, we do not guarantee that you will be able to create Acronis Secure Zone without corruption.
Please note that corruption of Acronis secure Zone does not relate to Acronis True Image.

We would recommend you to create Acronis Secure Zone on the new hard drive without bad blocks.

Thank you.
--
Tatyana Tsyngaeva

 

Stephen, you've enumerated quite nicely the weakness of using a SZ. It is a nice feature at first glance and useful "in its day", but nowadays with large hard drive so inexpensive, using the SZ feature is totally unnecessary and if used as the sole backup, leaves you with an "Achilles Heel".

 

Okay folks. You led me to some questions.

Let me preface: I bought a Dell PIII for $250 with XP Pro and Office Pro loaded. No disks were included. So I bought a 100GB HD and made it a slave. Then I purchased TI 9.0. I set-up a SZ on my slave drive.
I've set-up my computer so that everything on my slave (except the TI SZ) is replacable or no big loss.

Basically you are saying I need to make another backup? All I have is an 8x CD R. I have cd backups of all my important files. All I really want is to be able to have a back-up of XP Pro and the Office Pro.