TI10 Secure Zone issues?

I am using TI Home 10 with a 50 gig Secure Zone on a 350 gig hard drive. I have done a couple of complete partition backups and a restore in Windows Vista. Seems to work just fine.

I do have a couple of questions though -
1. I have noticed a few posts on this site that seem to warn against using the Secure Zone feature. Since this seems like such a great idea, I was wondering why it might not be. In my experience, hardware failure is not a problem - the real problem is Windows stuffing up. I am using TO10 more in the way of a Rollback program.

One reason I am using a Secure Zone is that I have one big hard drive (350 gigs) - and adding the Secure Zone was so easy. My only other option is to get an external USB hard disk of around the same size. And of course that is fairly costly.

2. I notice that I have 3 total backups, plus a few file backups in the Secure Zone. The problem is I cannot see how to delete the old ones. What happens if I do another backup and the SecureZone is full?

This to me seems the biggest drawback to using a SecureZone - there is little in the way to manage the backups in there.

Is there a way to manage these backups?

 

Acronis Secure Zone is always available for backup creation as long as there is space for the backup file.

If there is not enough space, older backups will be deleted to create space.

 

Yes, I realise that. The problem is I cannot choose to delete unwanted backups myself. I guess it is always the earliest backups that it deletes - and of course I might NOT want that. I would rather delete the backups in the middle - at least that way I can always go back to a clean install (which was my very first backup).

This is almost a fatal flaw for me - I need a program that will me keep the backups I want to keep. This automatic rotation is almost useless.

I do not even see how I can archive a backup off to an external device - as I really DO want to keep my very first backup.

The only answer (unless I can see some way to edit these things), is to use an external backup location, which will be very expensive (and a lot slower, I presume).

 

The Secure zone has its advantages and disadvantages. Many choose to use or not to use based on those issues.

Without using Secure Zone:

If you have another partition or another drive (internal or external or network), TI can easily be directed to store your backup on any drive you designate and to any folder you designate. You are in total control. You choose where they go and which ones are retained. The .tib backup files are simply data files and handled just like other data files. For my storage, I use a mix of internal and external and occasionally copy to DVD for additional storage. Each full backup set is in its own folder. I simply name my backup folders as Acronis-month+day or Acronis-Mar19. The name assigned to the backup is something like "Fulldisk-.tib". Any name will suffice as long as there are no spaces or periods and you can identify its overall content.

For more help on this topic, click this menu of Product Links, FAQs & Useful Forum Threads and click the thread titled
"Acronis Secure Zone and Startup Recovery Manager"

 

That's not how my TI10 works, unfortunately!

When the Secure Zone gets full it tells me it can't proceed with the backup and that I have to resize the SZ. I now have a 250GB drive almost totally dedicated to the SZ.

I'm told that the only way is to delete the SZ and re-create it, which I don't like doing as it creates a window of opportunity for a complete disaster...

How can I get my installation to manage itself as I'm told it ought to?

Thanks.

 

Hello octaglider,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please note the rules Acronis Secure Zone follows, as described in the User's Guide:

From the description you provided it appears that you have only one full backup in the secure zone, and the rest is filled with incremental/differential ones. Therefore, we recommend you to recreate the full backup.
Please also notice that Acronis True Image 10.0 Home introduces a new feature: Acronis Backup Locations. They provide automatic name, size, storage period and number management for stored backup in folders of your choice. The backups also remain accessable by normal means. You can learn more about Acronis Backup Locations from chapter 7 "Backup location management" of the respective User's Guide.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

I presume that this 250Gb drive has only backups, if so, dispense with the SZ altogether and just save your backups like any other compressed file. You will then have full control of which backups to keep or not to keep.