protect when first used, having no prior .des file will restore the existing backup.tar.gz, then upon a normal shutdown an encrypted .des backup file will be created using your protect passwd. At this point I do not automatically delete the old exising backup.tar.gz file. It is up to you to do this step.upon subsqeuent booting, the protect option is not asking for a new password but the password that must match that which was used to encrypted the backup file. If it does not match then no restore will occur, unless, of course, you did not remove the old backup.tar.gz. That is why I instructed you to remove it. Otherwise it can become confusing.Your second issue is a Qemu issue. Qemu with default setting has no access to real drives, only a virtual harddrive which does contain the starting backup.tar.gz. You should not remove the harddrive unless you become more familiar with Qemu and its support files, including their image file creation tools.