Acronis Secure Zone Contents - Solved (I no longer use it)
I have been chatting with tech regarding what appears to be a problem when backing up a full backup or incremental backup to the Acronis Secure Zone (ASZ) on the computer. The backup completes, and there are a bunch of tib files in ASZ, but not a recognizable file name for the backup. I am told this is due to some type of corruption, maybe in the scripts, or something. Anyhow, the tech redid everything I did, from creating the ASZ and doing a full backup, aand did things several times. NOTHING has been resolved at this point, they are huddling with the experts, they say. I have attached screen shots of the ASZ, and also one of when I backed up to an External Drive, which has a valid file name. Hoping maybe someone has seen this or knows what the problem is.
I personally have stopped using the Acronis Secure Zone for very similar reasons - I was backing up multiple separate partitions to the ASZ thinking all was just fine, Acronis assured me that I didn't need to provide any file names as it would manage all those little details for the ASZ.
The problem came when I wanted to restore one individual partition from the ASZ and could not identify which backup image related to which partition and the bootable rescue media didn't seem to be able to offer me any help either.
Fortunately I had also backed up the same partition to a network drive and was able to restore from there, but I deleted / removed the ASZ and just created a separate partition of my own that I control all the backup names for.
Ksiemb,
I have no experience with Secure Zone. I honestly see no benefit in using it though and that's why I've not used it. I think it adds another layer of complexity which is really not necessary and more likely to cause problems than not. These are just my personal opionions though and I am ingnorant on the secure zone portion of the application for never using it.
HOWEVER, although I can't help with ur existing issue, I would like to suggest that you ditch secure zone and create a specific folder on the root of your external drive for backups, and then use individual folders for each backup within that folder to keep things organized and neat. Backup will still work as intended, and as long as you create the backup to these specific locations, managing and maintaining them should be relatively straightforward. I've used Acronis for 6 years in this fashion and backup and recovery, both in Windows and with the offline bootable recovery media has been very straightforward and easy. On the other hand, I've read numerous forum posts with problems with Secure Zone similar to what you're experiencing and I don't know if it's an Acronis bug, or Windows UEFI issues with Secure zone etc. Regardless, I just don't think it's necessary and would avoid using it as long as you make a dedicated space on your backup drive for backups and organize them in their own folders. I think you'll have a lot better experience with the application going this route.
If you want/need password protection for your backup on these folders, you can do this in Windows by right clicking a folder, properties, general, advanced >>>encrypt contentes to secure data. This will prompt you for a password that must be entered to unlock the contents of the folder. You would, however, need to do this before an Acronis backup job is able to run though. Alternatively, bitlocker would also be a good solution for folder password protection. For me, I don't use either. Instead though, I set folder/share permissions for my primary backup folder which replicates through the entire directtory so that only certain accounts can access the conent of backup folders and that is sufficient for my needs. Perhaps one of these may work for you as well and avoid the extra complexity of secure zone?
Thanks Steve for your reply. The techs working on this seem to want to blame my hard drive or anything else they want to come up with. Even doing Malware scans. At least I can tell them ,yes, someone else has had similar problem
Bobbo: My external drive not big enough capacity. Leftover HD from XP days. But will be buying a bigger one soon, it appears !
Acronis "Expert" support finally got on my computer with a four hour Remote session, and appeared to have solved the bad file name problem in the Acronis Secure Zone (ASZ). Ran a full backup and six Incrementals, with no problem. Files names were ok. But this morning, when it reverted to deleting the backups and creating a new full backup in the ASZ, the file name is screwed up again. So much for case# 23686117 which I prematurely marked as resolved, as backups were going along smoothly. Now there is no support, unless I want to pay, so I will gladly look for another software product to replace this piece of shit ! One, disgusted Ex Customer of Acronis
I would recommend replying to any mail that you had from the Support team with reference to your case # 23686117 and feedback that the problem has returned and how dissatisfied you are, that the issue is not resolved!
I did this towards the end of last year and my case was reopened.
Having said the above, I personally have stopped using both the ASZ and ASRM after my own issues, I just created my own user managed partition where I have full control over file names etc. I have since invested in a Synology Disk Station NAS for extra security of backups.
Ditto to Steve's comment. if the issue is not resolved, the case should be re-opened.
Question...
Are you attaching any other drives that have the same backup name elsewhere as well? If you have the same backup in multiple locations, but some outside of the application backup script (where it assumes it is and will be) I believe this will not only cause problems with ASRM, but other things like mounting, validating, etc. I don't use ASRM either, but I have found that if i have backup configured for a certain location and in my backup scripts, then add a spare drive with a copy of that backup and try to mount the copy, it actually attempts to mount the original lcoation because it is tied to the original versions settings stored in the Acronis database.
Perhaps this is not the case at all in your environment (having backup copies stored eslewhere and connected to the PC at some point in time), but wanted to mention this in case you do.
Thanks, I did reply, and am waiting.
Not sure what you mean by "Are you attaching".....
I do maintain two separate backup jobs. One backs up to ASZ, the other to External HD. No one from Acronis indicated this would cause problem.
I have finally decided to do what Steve has already done. Stop Using the Acronis Secure Zone. I found that by doing a disk cleanup prior to backup, I can store one full backup and six incrementals on my trusty 80GB external drive. The Experts fixed the file names once, but when the backups cycled back to a full backup, the file names got screwy again, so good bye ASZ and good riddance !