Startup Recovery Manager and Secure Zone.

Hi all, I have a specific question on one aspect of this program. I have gone through the step by step instructions on the home installation and usage, but I am unclear on something. Is this recovery manager and secure zone part on page 3 necessary. I want to do the following only, please let me know if I can:

I want to create a bootable disk of coarse.
I want to make an image of my drive
and if I ever need to, I will go to that bootable disk to run the program and restore a drive ( the one I am using or a blank new one ) to the image. I don`t want to have to partition and install a secure zone, what is that for anyways, my image will be stored on an external hard drive via USB. Any help is very much appreciated, especially if it explains this last step for me and whether I can skip it. I do not need to run schedulers or have multiple images, I back up data seperately anyways on a regular basis.

The advantage for me would be to be able to skip having to re-install windows, running 150 updates, reinstalling all my programs, and getting the computer to look the way it used to. I am assuming that is the real strength with these image snapshot products, thanks.

 

Hi AMG, welcome to the ATI Forum

The Secure Zone and Startup Recovery Manager are best used when you have only 1 disk, for example a Laptop. Think of it this way, if you have only 1 disk where are you going to safely store your backups? The Secure Zone provides you with a safe storage area for a computer that has only 1 disk, and the SRM provides an integrated method of recovering a failed system from the Secure Zone.

If you have 2 or more disks then my recommendation is that you do NOT use the Secure Zone and Startup Recovery Manager, as there are much better ways to create a safe bootable system.

 

Secure Zone is stated to be convenient storage in preventing access from virus's or help eliminate corruption of data.

 

thx guys, that was quick, do you use this product, do you like it. I see some negative posts, and all I really want is an image just in case, but if that image doesn`t work, then it`s no use.

I do not have 2 disks Tabvla, but I have an external drive that I can hook up via USB for the image and for bootable disk, I guess I would use a CD-R

 

If you have an external drive that you can use then I would forget all about
secure zone and start up security manager.

Just start by making a full image to the external drive. also follow instructions to make a recovery disk (CD). Then you can experiment by booting from the CD inorder to either make an image or to restore an image.

 

I am in a small minority of users who actually use the secure zone. I have used it since version 8 up to the present Version 9.
I choose to have it on a slave drive rather than on the drive it is protecting.
Like any other optional part of any system it has it's good and bad features. The way I use it avoids the bad and uses the good. If this same principle were more generally applied there would be far fewer problems.

Just because some people have made mistakes in the way they use it is no reason to condemn it out of hand.
The same could be said about using DVDs as a backup media. I would never use them myself but it is a matter of choice, indeed their possibility is why many bought TI in the first place.


Xpilot

 

Hi Xpilot - I'm willing to be convinced - with a pc which has 2 hard drives and using ATI 10 how would I benefit from using ASZ on the second drive ?

Currently I simply make system and data partition images to (a) the second drive
(b) external USB (c) an external network drive (d) to other drives on the network and (e) rarely and less frequently to DVD.

Am I correct in thinking that if I used ASZ on the second drive I would no longer be able to see individual images and hence no longer be able to transfer them out to other parts of the system for archival purposes ?

 

First a correction to my previous post :- I have used the SZ from V 8 to V10. I did not stop at V9.

I benefit from using a secure zone in the following ways, how anyone else uses the SZ is entirely up to them.
1. By definition it is more secure to have a hidden partition than an open one.
2. I t is still by far the easiest way to schedule backups and enable automatic management of backup images. Version 10 has made it easier to achieve these desirable ends but it is still more complex and need a lot of thought to implement sucessfully. So I am sticking with the SZ.

Why do you feel that it is good practice to make backup images to four or sometimes even five different locations? This to me seems somewhat excessive. Wherever images are stored they are still only images and cannot be used as such to run a computer.There must always be the lingering doubt that they could fail to restore hence presumably the need for redundancy.
Rather than have multiple copies of images both within and outside the computer I restore images to exchangable drives. I thus have the benefits of ready-to-go backup drives which can be safely stored outside the computer till the next update. A history of proven backup images is retained in the SZ should they ever be necessary.

To answer your question on the visibility of images in a secure zone. They can be selected individually, they can be mounted and files can be copied therefrom. In the latest version one can get to individual files without have to create a virtual drive although as mounting is a trivial exercise I see no real added value in this facility.

In the interests of copying images form one place to another for archival purposes I do not understand this concept. My main hard drive contains all my systems and data from day one. My backup drives, external to the computer are the same. Should I wish to roll the computer back to an earlier time I can select from a series of archive images in the secure zone either to restore from them or more likely copy an individual file that has been deleted in error.

Just a final thought. If I choose do the full Monty and create a full backup image of my main drive and restore it to an exchangable drive on a daily routine my total time involvement would be 13 minutes from the exchange of drives to the restore finishing. The imaging runs in Windows while I am having lunch so does not take any of my time at all.
I cannot see how a system of multiple redundant image backups can be more efficient or more secure. The only 100% certain way is to do an actual restore and that I can do on a daily basis in a 100% secure manner.

Xpilot

 

we might perhaps be talking at cross purposes here ?

For system images that I want to make and to restore quickly I use another partition or internal drive. I always make a system image before installing new software, new drivers, or new hardware and frequently restore the image a couple of hours later when I don't like the changes made. For this type of imagining I might consider changing to ASZ on a second internal drive - but am still not convinced. It may help to know that I only make full images and never use any automation.

As to the reason for other images - well fire and theft come to mind as does hardware and media failure. when I leave my office my vital data goes with me in a 120 gig pocket USB. So when I come back to find my office burgled or burned down I won't feel too bad. The Fireproof office safe has system original DVDs and the occasional Data dvd. Other portable drives and disks are kept off site - again for security reasons.

Having used ATI since version 6 I am very confident that images will always restore. The last time I had a failure it I was proably using version 7 or 8 and it turned out that the USB device was to blame. So the reason for multiple copies is not that I distrust Acronis but that I distrust drives and DVDs and would not want thieves to walk off with my pc and extra drive.