Secure Zone Removal

Boy do I have a mess. It started with a conflict with my PQV2i.sys file. Seems there was a conflict with norton ghost.

Anyway I uninstalled Acronis TI however I forgot to manage my secure zone before doing so. Actually I didn't realiuze I needed to. The Acronis TI is installed on my c drive and the secure zone is on the external usb d drive. But now that I have uninstalled Acronis and reinstalled it, my secure zone is is visable in the manager but the manager can not adjust the size and it can't as far as I can tell even be accessed.

The usb drive d is 200 gb of which 165 gb has my images on it. I don't care about recovering the images, I just want to be able to reformat the hard drive back to 200gb and start over.

But no luck so far, I been working on this most of the weekend.
I hate computers

Steve

 

Hello Steve,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please clarify what exactly do you mean when saying that "the manager can not adjust the size and it can't as far as I can tell even be accessed"?

Have you received any error messages? What exact error messages?

Please describe actions taken before the problem appears step-by-step.

Could you please also clarify the reason why you can not just reformat external hard drive? Can you access this drive using Windows Explorer? Is it recognized properly?

Please also note that during the uninstallation process Acronis True Image 8.0 asks you for what you want to do with Acronis Secure Zone.

You can also find interesting this FAQ article describing why we do not recommend to create Acronis Secure Zone on external hard drives.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov

 

When I use the Secure Zone Wizard it gives me 2 choices to use disk 1 which is my C drive or to use disk 2 which is my external USB 200 GB backup drive. The Secure Zone Manager shows that my external USB drive is 189.9 GB in size. I select disk 2 and the Next Screen: The manager shows disk 2 with 2 choices
Disk 2
DRIVE_D [G:] 23.33 GB Capacity 23.33 Free Space NTFS (line 1)
Acronis Secure Zone 165.6 Capacity 0 Free Space (line 2)

There is a check box in front of both of these lines. If I don't check any and just click next I get this message. Acronis True Image was not able to create Acronis Secure Zone on the selected drive. Now if I try to select line 2 it won't let me so if I select line 1 then the Secure Zone Manager takes me to the next screen where I can specify the size of the secure zone. But this secure zone would be in the 23.33 GB area and not the 165.6 GB secure zone area. Which is what I want to adjust and get rid of.

When I try and access Drive 2 through windows explorer the error message says G:\ is not accessible access is denied. I can access drive G through "My Computer" but I can only get into the 23.33GB area of the drive. I tried formatting the drive but the only area that I can format is the 23.33GB area.


When I uninstalled Acronis TI I did not see anything that asked me what I wanted to do with the secure zone area.

I have been using Acronis for about 6 months and have already had to restore my C drive with the setup that I was using and it worked great. I use the external USB drive so that incase of an emergency I can take it with me. However I didn't know I shouldn't use the secure zone on an external drive, the setup instructions aren't very clear.

 

Hello sborder,

As there is already a Secure Zone on your external drive, when you start the Manage Acronis Secure Zone wizard you should be presented with two options - (1) Manage Acronis Secure Zone and (2) Remove Acronis Secure Zone. You need to select the the second option in order to remove the SZ (see screenshot below) and then tick the checkbox next to the 23.33GB partition.

Regards

 

There is no screen like this in my version 8.0 build 889

When I click on Manage Acronis Secure Zone I am taken to the next screen that says "Welcome to the Manage Acronis Secure Zone Wizard" Screen. On that screen there is only one opyion and that is "Next". After clicking on Next I am taken to the screen where it says "Disk Selection" where I am given the choice of Disk 1 or Disk 2 (disk 2 in my case is my external usb hard drive)
When I select Disk 2 and select Next I am taken to the Create Acronis Secure Zone...

I will stop at this point because I believe I am well past where you said the two options - (1) Manage Acronis Secure Zone and (2) Remove Acronis Secure Zone should be.

Steve

 

Hi Steve,

Your description indicates to me that the reinstalled TI doesn't recognise the old SZ as valid otherwise you would get the two options I mentioned above.

Try creating a new SZ in the 23.33 GB partition. Use the slider to set the size to maximum available and accept the default option to also activate the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager.

Once that's done, start the Manage Acronis Secure Zone Wizard again and you should be presented with the option to remove the SZ. Proceed with the removal as instructed by the Wizard. With luck, when completed, TI will have deactivated the Startup Recovery Manager and reclaimed all the free space on your external drive.

Regards

 

Well that didn't work. I could create a secure zone on the 2nd disk but only in the 23.3gb area. I then could go back and erase the secure zone but only in the 23.3gb area. Any other ideas ?

Thanks
Steve

 

I believe you want to delete the usb drive and are unable to access it to do so. Another possible choice (to try) would be starting acronis disk clone and use manual configuration and see if the usb drive is listed as a disk choice. If so let it wipe and clone your drive like your c drive changing partition sizes etc. but keeping your c drive without opting to delete it. Then disconnect and see if you can then wipe your usb drive later if windows sees it. Just another possibility from someone with only 2 weeks experience on this; hope it doesn't sound too far fetched.

 

Good idea, but it didn't work. I set up Acronis to clone drive c: to drive g: and when the pc rebooted Acronis started analyzing the partitions then I got this error message. Error: Partition not found. Press any key to reboot, so I did and then just before windows opened I got a Acronis screen that said: Acronis true image completed.

There has just got to be a way that I can get this fixed with out buying a new hard drive.

Thanks for the idea
Steve

 

Hello Steve,

Please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

Please also do the following:

- Launch Acronis Report Utility once again and select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;
- Boot the computer from this diskette and wait for report creation process to finish;
- Collect the report file from the floppy;
- Rename the report created from under Windows to report_win.txt and report created using the bootabale floppy to report_diskette.txt.

Please keep your external USB hard drive connected while creating these reports and Windows System Information.

Send all the collected files to support@acronis.com along with the exact model of your external hard drive and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov

 

Hi, Steve. Perhaps you have multiple partitions on G drive, if that is the case you may have accidentally assigned the G drive to the fat 32 or fat sector. I do not believe the system will be able to see or clone if those sectors were listed using disk clone. I cloned another hard drive internally and then booted from the hard drive and the orig. drive was invisible except through my computer right click - click on manage - on the left under storage - click on disk management - Disk 0 was initally visible with 3 sectors (hlthy fat/hlthysystem ntfs/hlthy fat 32). Hlthy system was already given alphabet c. Directly below was Disk 1 Divided into 3 sectors of which you can only chose the ntfs to give an alphabet and leave the secure zones Fat and Fat 32 alone. I believe you had your larger of the 3 choices as your secure zone. If that is the case, you do not want to give it the drive alphabet letter for disc clone, as I do not believe it can do anything with it. One of the smaller two sectors is the one you want disc clone to see to analyse manually and then resize the whole drive g eventually. I hope this was the case of mearly the wrong sector being given the drive alphabet designation. If many sectors try right clicking on a different sector to add an alphabet. (do not chose FAT or FAT 32 sectors for the alphabet). Just another possibility, hope it helps David.