Why would anybody use Secure Zone?

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by neilsp, Oct 13, 2008.

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  1. neilsp

    neilsp Registered Member

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    I'm just setting up True Image Home 2009 and thought I would try Secure Zone (after noting that I have no memory card readers anymore).

    The machine is fast, with a quad-core processor and a two internal disks. With the Secure Zone on the spare disk, setting up and editing scheduled tasks is sloooww and very flaky whenever there is a need to access the secure zone. The backups themselves were slow as well. After the Secure Zone was removed, all disk activity is as snappy as it should be.

    Given that I can boot from CD if needed and Secure Zone doesn't seem to work all that well, why does anybody use it? What am I missing?
     
  2. seekforever

    seekforever Registered Member

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    It should work well but...

    The main reason, and it is somewhat historical, for the SZ is to accommodate people with one HD and one partition. There was no where to put an image such that it can be restored unless they had a USB drive. The SZ allowed these people to create a partition without having to own partitioning software and understand how to run it. Acronis decided that they would make the backup partition "hidden" so it would be less vulnerable to tampering thus the "secure". Since in this case it was on the one and only HD, if the HD died, the archives weren't secure at all.

    Some people like to put the SZ on a different drive and use some of its features to automatically manage their backups. This was somewhat superseded by Backup Locations but it isn't clear from some of the posts exactly what you are supposed to use for them in TI2009.

    You can't copy archives into or out of the Secure Zone unless you want to bootup some variant of Unix and play with it.
     
  3. Xpilot

    Xpilot Registered Member

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    Before the 2009 version the secure zone worked just fine. I have used one since version 8.
    AFAIK it has been mortally wounded by the changes made to it in Version 2009. So I will stay with version10 where all the features I need work reliably.

    Xpilot
     
  4. jabbax

    jabbax Registered Member

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    Using secure zone has allowed me to automate my backups. I set up the SZ on a separate hd, set up 2 tasks, one to make daily incrementals and one to make a bi-weekly full. Every 2 weeks a new full backup is created and incrementals start based on that bi-weekly full. Yeah, it's simple but all I need to give me roughly 2 weeks of backups and I don't have to constantly check it. I have ATI 11 and tried the backup locations, limiting the number of backups, etc. but none of that ever worked for me. Would have been nice though if it had. Would be nicer if Acronis would fix the crippled software they sold me. Just my $.02.
     
  5. retread

    retread Registered Member

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    I do something similar. My question is: What do you do with all the backups that Acronis leaves on your Backup HDD? I have to go in every couple of weeks and delete the old ones or I run out of space (and this is a BIG drive).

    Also, I notice that I can't defrag that HDD completely. What's up with that?
     
  6. jabbax

    jabbax Registered Member

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    I just set a Secure Zone (SZ) partition size that will hold several full backups and incrementals. When the SZ is approaching capacity and a backup starts that will not fit the remaining space, the oldest backup and its associated incrementals are deleted. This leaves several full backups and their associated incrementals in the SZ but to me, that's the idea behind the SZ......I don't have to fuss with it. I tried all the other methods with backup location but none of it worked as advertised or maybe I missed something in the instructions.

    Quote is from the manual explaining SZ behavior.
    As for defragging, I never defrag any drives other than the one containing my OS and programs. Have heard both sides of the defrag argument but don't see the advantage of defraging data only drive (backup storage) since it is not read/write access intensive as is the OS / program drive.
     
  7. jehosophat

    jehosophat Registered Member

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    I dont see the point of using a SZ if you only have one hard disk. If the disk dies then you lose everything.

    Instead I do regular Full backups only to hard disks in caddies. I dont use a SZ.
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2008
  8. TheWill

    TheWill Registered Member

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    Im new to acronis but having an OS image with a few common applications ready to go and be restored in a few minutes is nice. Also I think most people keep there personal files on an external or non primary drive anyway.
     
  9. shieber

    shieber Registered Member

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    Since ATI10, you can automate management of backups without using a Secure Zone (or special partitions) by using Backup Locations.

    This has been removed, sort of, from ATI12 if you want to only run Fulls. But if youo want to run incs/diffs, then when you create a task in 12 you have the option for automatic consolidation, which will take care of automated backup file managemetn much to the same effect as in ATI10 and 11.

    In 10 and 11, it can be wonky with file-by-file backups but worked pretty good with partition backups.


     
  10. Espresso

    Espresso Registered Member

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    You can use Paragon Image Explorer for moving/deleting files in the secure zone.
     
  11. shieber

    shieber Registered Member

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    Although it is not adviable with ATI12 as Paragon won't update ATI12's database of backup files.

     
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