What is a zone and what is it's purpose?

I've tried Drive Image 7, don't wanna use it. I've tried Ghost 2003, good but it wiped out my D partition upon restoring my C partition. I've been reading the user guide for Acronis True Image and the only part that makes no sense to me is where they talk about zones. Like they say enter the size of the zone. And create Acronis Secure Zone. What is that stuff about? Why is it in the software? Other utilities don't have it so why Acronis?

 

From the True Image website:

"Acronis Secure Zone is a special, hidden system partition for storing disk and partition images. Ordinary applications can't access it, for image security purposes.

If you create a zone, it will be listed after all PC disks available for image creation and restoration.

The Acronis Secure Zone is primarily meant to be used with Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (see below). It can be used to store both images and data."

If this wasn't what you were talking about I apolagize.

Thanks,

Chris

 

I would like to have further understanding of the secure zone as well.

I used to think it was to prevent virus' from infecting files in images. But in the thread named "XP2 restore works, can't boot drive", Acronis has confirmed that there is no opportunity to modify files in backup images. If that is the case, why would one need to use the secure zone?

Thanks,
Skyhawk

 

Whilst "malware" can't interfere with individual files inside the image, it could easily corrupt or delete the image file itself.

Regards

 

Well that makes a lot of sense. Couldn't see the forest for the trees...
I currently have all of the drives from two different PCs backed up to one external USB2/firewire 200GB hard drive. I plan to connect that drive only to do backups or, in event of a failure, restore. Would it be advisable to wipe it and do all of my backups using the secure zone? I've read posts where folks have problems using the secure zone.
Thanks,
Skyhawk

 

Hello again Skyhawk

If you search this forum for "secure zone" you'll find a whole catalogue of problems/disasters.

According to Acronis Support, the SZ was primarily introduced for people without removable drives/media or without the facility to boot from a rescue disk (they could press F11 during system boot instead). With your setup it's not really necessary and I would steer well clear.

Regards

 

That is good to hear. I wasn't looking forward to doing the entire backup for both PCs again.
Thanks for the helpful advice,
Skyhawk

 

I've not used the secure zone before but I would like to know if it creates an actual partion or virtual.

If it is an actual partition then I can see this would be useful for people who haven't partitioned their hard disk but would still like to use an imaging tool.

Any one know if this is the case?

 

It creates an actual physical partition but it is hidden from windows however you can see it using linux, like knoppix, if you want to.

 

Just a thought Skyhawk but have you checked that you can access your external HD after booting from the (Linux based) TI Boot Rescue disk? Hopefully the answer is yes!!

Regards

 

Possibly not a very good backup policy though. If it's on your one and only hard drive and that fails then, "boom!", the Secure Zone's gone and hence your image with it. If you're serious about your software/data integrity (and you should be!) then imaging to a second hard drive or optical media is the preferred option.

Regards

 

Hi Menorcaman,
Yes. I wanted to be absolutely sure that TI8 will restore properly in event of a hard drive failure so I bought 2 spare hard drives, one 200gig in an external enclosure and one 120gig in the box. Did image backup to the 200gig and then did a restore to the 120gig using the boot CD that is created when TI8 is installed. Installed the 120gig in place of my triple boot system drive and all 3 boots work fine with at least one program. Put the 120gig back in the box and it is like a cloned drive sitting in reserve.
Thanks,
Skyhawk

 

uhh first of all, Ghost 2003 IS THE BEST IMO and the only reason why it would wipe out ur D partition is if u chose the disk option instead of partition for restoring ur backup...noobies please dont criticize ghost because it always works...been using ghost since 7.0 and still works with no problems...

 

Hi Skyhawk

Nice work. Now you really can "Compute With Confidence" as the Acronis blurb says!!

Regards
Menorcaman

 

Fine. If you're happy, stick with Ghost. However, just because it works for you doesn't mean to say it'll work for others. Same goes for True Image. I've been using TI since Version 6 (now at Version 8 Build 774) and whilst it works well for me, it's clear from this Forum that's not the case for everyone. As the saying goes - "one man's meat is another man's poison".

Regards

 

Ghost did not work for me. I use raid and Ghost did not seem to be able to work with raid. Acronis also has trouble working with raid. I'm hoping that having the latest build for Acronis fixes the raid issues. I would be grateful if someone could confirm this .

 

Hello everybody,

Thank you for taking the time to post on this forum and for using Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com/products/trueimage/).

As I can see, you have found the answers to all the questions discussed in this thread by yourself. This is very very good and I'm really glad to recognize it.

Thank you.

P.S. mereke, i have already answered your question today.

 

I absolutely agree, I store my images on an external USB2 drive. I was thinking more of software failures rather and hardware failures for the non-technical users who buy their new PCs with windows pre-installed and have 100+GB disks with only a C drive. These people, even though they don't know what they are really doing will still download different softwares or do things which may end up screwing their PCs up. Going back to the manufacturers recovery disk would still be quite painful for them and asking them to partition their drives may be too much.

Something like TI with secure zone will enable these users to partition their drive without realising it and have an easy to use image tool to create more recent backup images rather than using the recovery disk that came with the PC. Eventually they would learn to back up the images to DVD or get a second HDD.

 

Hi q1aqza

Fair comment for the category of user you've highlighted. For these people, imaging/restoring via the SZ would be infinitely better than using the manufacturer's recovery disk (at the very least their personal data wouldn't get zero'd out!!).

Regards