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Lost Secure Zone

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I've had great success with ATI v. 10. I just migrated this computer from a too small hdd to a larger one. The move, thanks to ATI, was easy and successful.

I wanted to create a new Secure Zone on the new hdd to make the next move easy. That also went without a hitch.

For some reason that I can't recall now, the Secure Zone ended up in the middle of the unallocated portion of the new drive. I couldn't find how to get ATI to move the partition (probably I got impatient and just went with what I knew). So, I used Aeseus Partition Master to move it to the end of the hdd.

Unfortunately, now ATI can't find it. It is still there in disk management. I had a clean install saved there, but have since updated the computer. I could certainly just create the new image now, but I'd rather find the pristine, windows only image that I had previously saved there.

WinXP SP3, updated. Dell GX280 stock. New Samsung 1tb hdd.

Any help greatly appreciated.

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New here, obviously. I did search and couldn't find an answer. Sorry if previsouly asked and answered.

Archie

archie:

TI refers to the Secure Zone location by absolute sector, so if you moved it then TI won't find it.

Since you have a partition manager I would do the following. The Secure Zone is just a FAT32 partition that has one byte changed in the partition table so that it will remain hidden from Windows. If you change the type identifier of the SZ partition from Acronis Secure Zone (0BCh) to FAT32 LBA (0Ch) then the partition will become visible and you can copy/paste files to and fro. Copy your image file to temporary storage, then delete the SZ partition and leave it as unallocated space.

Now use TI to create a new SZ in the unallocated space. If you want to put your clean install image back in the SZ then go back to Aesus Partition Master and again change the partition type to FAT 32 LBA (0Ch). Reboot to Windows and copy the image file(s) back to the SZ. Finally, reboot to Partition Master and change the type back to Acronis Secure Zone (0BCh).

You might want to re-think using a Secure Zone at all. It is "insecure" for the following reasons. First, if your disk dies then your backup dies with it. Second, the file system used in the SZ, FAT32, is not very reliable. NTFS is much more reliable. If it were me, I would store image files on an external USB disk formatted as NTFS and ditch the SZ.