Spurious Unallocated and Free Space after using DD1 v2160

Discussion in 'Acronis Disk Director Suite' started by Kritker, Mar 21, 2008.

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  1. Kritker

    Kritker Registered Member

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    After using Acronis Disk Director Suite® version 10.0 (build 2,160) on my Win XP Pro SP2 system Microsoft's "Computer Management | Disk Management" tool's partition map now shows that my 465.76 GB hard disk drive is now 901.51 GB in size.

    It also shows spurious/nonexistant "Unallocated" space of 405.26 GB right between my D: and E: partitions and spurious "Free Space" of 30.50 GB between a Healthy (Unknown Partition) System partition (30.00 GB, logical - by mistake) and my Healthy (Boot) partiton (30.01 GB).

    Disk Director's own partion map does not show these spurious entries but it was DD 10 that I used to create and manage the partitions on my hard disk drives.

    So far my system seems to be working OK and I have backed everything up but, while waiting for Acronis tech support to get back to me (from 19 March) I have to keep it running. The last thing I want to do is panic :argh:

    Needless to say, though, I am freaked out. Potentially corrupted partiton tables, or whatever else is going on, is frightening.

    I miss Powerquest. When it was good, it was very good. :'( (or maybe my memory isn't what it used to be. ;) )

    Does anyone have any insights? Thanks.
     
  2. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    Don't panic. You probably just have "mixed" Primary and Logical partitions. See this post for an example.
     
  3. Kritker

    Kritker Registered Member

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    You are absolutely correct and the post you mentioned describes my problem exactly.

    In fact, now that I look at the Disk Management color coding more closely, I see that my entire HD is an extended partition with Logical, Primary, Primary, Logical, Logical, Logical, Logical, Logical partitions. Not at all what I had intended. I wanted Primary, Primary, Primary, Extended partition with 6 logical partitions. I was, obviously, not careful enough when creating these with Disk Director.

    I now have to go back, delete the first logical partition (it's just a copy of the second, Primary partition and see what I get. Then I'll have to see what I can do about the Extended partition. Disk Director doesn't seem to show Extended partions in it partion map. Very interesting.

    Thanks very much for the information. It's much appreciated.
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2008
  4. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    You can redo the partitions if you want. It makes no functional difference, however. Just don't use Disk Management to make any partition changes.

    Disk Director doesn't show the Extended Partition Container. You will have to verify that with Disk Management or another program that does.

    You may have to delete all the Logical partitions and change the first partition to a Primary partition. Then all the remaining Logical partitions should be grouped together. However, you may also be able to fix it by just converting the first Logical partition to a Primary partition.
     
  5. Kritker

    Kritker Registered Member

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    Right!

    That was sufficient as verified by Disk Management.

    Also, Disk Director doesn't really seem to indicate which is the boot partition except that the boot partition has a tiny red flag on its coded icon in the upper pane's partition list. But then a non-system primary partition on another hard drive has the same flag, so I am not sure. There seems to be no key for the coded icons in front of the partition names.

    As well, a System partition which is Primary and Hidden has a drive letter assigned to it in Disk Director. This seems strange to me.

    Now if I could get rid of an extra 2 KB of unallocated space at the end of a 465.8 GB primary partition on a, nominal, 500 GB drive. The 465.8 partition is the only partition on the disk. It's not the wasted space that bothers me. It's only 2 KB. It's the inelegance of just leaving it there. :D It probably has to do with boundary alignment. Ah well. There are more important things to worry about.

    Thanks again for your help. Very timely and very accurate.
     
  6. MudCrab

    MudCrab Imaging Specialist

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    The little RED flag means that it is the Active partition. It doesn't have to be a "booting" partition. Any Primary partition can be marked as Active. You can just only have one per hard drive.
     
  7. Kritker

    Kritker Registered Member

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    Thank you!
     
  8. Kritker

    Kritker Registered Member

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    Doing this not only solved the problem but since then Disk Director has started up much quicker. It used to take inordinately long to analyze partitions. Now it just zooms through that part. I hope True Image 11 will also analyze disks as fast. Again, many thanks.
     
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