Acronis Secure Zone Create & Use
I have TI2017 Build #8058.
I use the boot disk only and do not install TI in Windows.
I am building a new PC for a relative. Can I use Acronis boot rescue disk or gparted in order to create an Acronis Secure Zone? It would be nice to put an image backup of the Windows install in the SecureZone in case I have to restore the system later for them.
Please give me some details on this.
Thanks.


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What might be the reason for you to need to restore the system? If it might be due to drive failure, having a Secure Zone on that same disk will not help you one bit.
I would ask: what benefit do you believe you obtain by using the ASZ? I don't use it myself. I prefer to write my backups to external hard drives, and I don't see the point of adding the complexity of the ASZ.
AFAIK, the Acronis Secure Zone can work properly. It's just that, IMO, it serves no valid purpose anymore.
When the ASZ was introduced many years ago, I think around version 8 which IIRC was around 13 years ago, there was a purpose. External storage wasn't common and was expensive. Most users had just a single HD in their PCs. The ASZ provided a sort of sandboxed partition to store backups.
Nowadays, when external hard drives are good, reliable and relatively cheap, the ASZ has outlived its usefulness, and so its complexity is no longer a worthwhile cost. Write your backups to external hard drives. If you have critical data or your system state is critical, use multiple backup drives that you periodically rotate. If you want to increase your data security, store one of your backup drives off-site, and every week or so swap it for the one at home.
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I am in agreement with tuttle on this one. Another possibility is to install a second HDD and place the backup on it, then disconnect the power for that HDD. A half-way house is to leave it connected and in the security settings make it so normal users cannot access that HDD. I have done this for my mother-in-law; I have Acronis make regular backups to that drive and as I am the only user who has access to Acronis she cannot accidentally make a mess of things.
Ian
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That's a clever strategy, Ian. Good one!
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Ian, Tuttle, you may be interested in topic: How to automatically connect and disconnect an external hard drive before and after a backup which I worked on for another user who wanted to secure his backup drive - see the final post of this topic for links to the documentation / code for this method. This would work for any partition assigned a drive letter.
I personally stopped using ASZ some while back after problems with identifying image files held there on a dual-boot system, so I just tend to create my own NTFS dedicated partition for local backups (mainly on my laptop for easy recovery if needed when travelling), along with external backups to drives / NAS.
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Thanks, Steve, that is a valuable method and resource. Good job!
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Steve I remember that alternative now that you mention it.
Ian
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