Acronis DD V10 fails at all partitioning tasks

Hi,
I'm new here & also new to Acronis DD V10.
Despite the claim of easy intuitive use I can't get a result on what seems straightforward partitioning tasks.
I guess I'm doing something wrong, but what?

I have a 1 GHz PC; P3;512 MB RAM ; XP Pro with SP3 & all updates. One 40 GB internal HD (C Drive) where my OS & programs are installed. And one 320 GB external HD , USB connected, (Western Digital) where I have established 4 NTFS primary partitions each 48.8 GB . That leaves about 107 GB of unallocated space on the ext HD which I can't use because my "OS does not see it".

This situation is easily seen in the "Acronis view" screendump attached.

I simply wish to establish one or maybe 2 logical partitions in the 107 Gb of unallocated space, seems simple but Acronis can't do it. "Create partition Failed" no explanation! I tried the Manual & Wizard approach with the same result.

I considered simply expanding the size of "K(I)" using the unallocated space, but it seems Acronis constrains this approach to allow expansion only from free space in the existing partitions which is useless, mainly because they are nearly full.
To say I am disappointed with this program would be the understatement of the year.

Can anyone help with some pointers please.
Peter O

 

Peter:

Welcome to the forum. The reason that you cannot add another partition is that your disk's partition table is full. A partition table has room for only four entries or "slots". Each primary partition takes a slot, and an unlimited number of logical partitions occupy one slot.

Therefore, you can have on a disk at maximum either four primary partitions, or three primaries and an unlimited number of logical partitions. In your case you already have four primaries so your partition table is full.

To work around this you could convert the last primary partition to a logical partition using DD. After doing that you will be able to continue to add as many logical partitions to the disk as you want.

Hope this helps...

 

Thanks Mark,

I did not know this despite having done a fair bit of research on partitioning.
Why on earth does DD not display, at the very least, the warning "partition table full". Ideally with a "refer help file", where your explanation could be included.

I will probably change all 4 existing primary partitions to Logical & create one or two primaries in the as yet unallocated space, will advise result.

Note however, that the other issue of DD failing to increase the size of one primary using the unallocated space is not yet explained. Can you shed some light on this please.

Thanks
Peter O

 

I agree that a meaningful error message would be helpful. Perhaps the designers of the program just mistakenly assumed that everyone knows that you can't have more than four entries in the partition table

Did you do the operation from the Windows version of the program or from the boot CD? How did you attempt to increase size; by resizing the partition?

I don't see a reason that this failed, but in case you tried a different operation other than "Resize", then give that a try. In manual mode, right-click on the "NEW VOLUME K" partition and choose "Resize". Drag the slider to the right to increase the size of the partition.

You should be able to do this from the Windows version of DD 10 because the partition being modified is not the System partition, so use of the boot CD should not be required. However, you could also give that a try. I usually do all partition operations from the boot CD just to get Windows out of the way.

 

As I can't seem to open a new thread I post here:

I made three partitions on a 16 GB SDHC card using Acronis DD 10. All three were intended to be NTFS. All three appear as file system none, the properties pages say that there are errors, I can't convert or format or delete these unuseable partitions and half the SD card is now lost. Good thing that I wasn't working om my HDD.

I once sent a query to Acronis and received an automated acknowledgement that says:

Thank you for contacting Acronis!

We are sending you this letter to assure you that your message has
been received and is being processed.

That was on 3 July 2008 and still no response received (the reference is 1576082).

This is annoying because for years I used Partition Magic but it isn't compatible with Windows Vista or with SD cards, and the only replacement I could find is Acronis.

Any helpful suggestions will be much appreciated.

 

jotache:

This may be a Windows issue, depending on whether the SDHC card is seen as a fixed drive or as a removable drive. On a removable USB flash drive, for example, you can add additional partitions but Windows will only see and be able to use the first partition; therefore adding extra partitions is pointless. However, other operating systems like Linux are able to use multiple partitions on removable devices.

To get Windows out of the equation, what happens if you reboot from the Acronis recovery CD in "safe" mode? You may be more successful with partition operations that way but it will depend on whether your PC BIOS can see the SDHC card at boot time. Even if you succeed you will still run into the Windows issue of only being able to use the first partition on the card.

If you want a way of recovering the full size of the card you could try the following:

1. Remove any valuable data from the card - the next steps are destructive.
2. Using DD, right-click on the disk (not a partition but the description of the disk, like Disk 3) Be sure to select the correct disk!
3. Choose "Clear" to wipe the card. The intention is to clear the first few sectors of the card to wipe out the MBR and partition table.
4. Click on the checkered flag to commit.
5. You only need to let the operation continue for a little while. Cancel after a few seconds.
6. Reboot into Windows and use Windows Disk Management to format the card.

 

Mark,

Reporting back on the problem you were helping me with:
Sorry its been a while.
I was successful with recovering my unallocated 100 Gb (approx) of HD space using the approach you suggested.
I also renamed the volumes.
The whole process involved me in "committing to" 16 changes & to be honest I was very nervous about this.
It took much longer to process than I expected, maybe 30 mins or so (I did not keep time). Anyway all turned out well.
I still could not resize one partition using the unallocated space but will report further on this after I collect my thoughts.
Meanwhile I do suggest that some improvements in the help file are long overdue, its simply not good enough to say (as you have said) "I guess the designers expected people to know this".
Good SW is not put together without the cooperation of several people, some of whom should take great care that they represent the interests of the average user.

Thanks for the help to date will report again soon.
Peter O

 

Peter:

Good to hear. Perhaps you could post another picture of your disk layout along with a description of what you'd like to do. The pictures are extremely valuable in answering a lot of questions without back-and-forth because they contain so much information -- one picture is worth a thousand words, correct?