HDD not recognized

Help! I installed a Secure Zone on a ext. USB-HDD (Maxtor 300 GB with one Partition). On this HDD there has been a lot of MP3's and other Data. After installing the Secure Zone, Windows can not recognize the MP3 and Data on the HDD, only the Secure Zone is watchable. After that I delete the Secure Zone, but the HDD is still not recognized. The HDD is only watchable when I use TI 9 or Disc Director. Therefore I could not use the MP3's or the Data because of the Problem. Maybe the Reason is the FAT32 or something the TI 9 did to the MBR?

Please excuse my English, it's been awhile since my schooldays!

 

It is not recommended that a secure zone be set up on an external drive but we cannot back track as you have already done that.

When creating a secure zone the set up wizard would have asked from where to take the required space. Your hard drive has only one partition so you should only have allocated some of the unused space to the secure zone.
A secure zone can only contain .tib files so if you allocated more space than was free for use you will have deleted some of your data files. There should have been some warning to this effect but as I have never allocated used space to a secure zone I cannot be certain.

As your USB drive is not recognised after you deleted the secure zone the implication is that you allocated the whole of the drive to the secure zone. If so this is bad news as all your data will been effectively destroyed.

It may be possible to to recreate the original USB drive's partition and recover some or all of the data but that is outside my realm of experience.

Perhaps someone with more expertise will be able to put you on the right path. In the meantime do not use that HDD because any operation may make any sort of recovery less likely.

Edit:

I have not used it myself but I believe that Disc Director has the ability to reinstsate a partion that has been deleted by mistake. That could just be your salvation.

Good luck.

 

Hello murphthesurf,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please accept our apologies for the delay with the response.

Please note that we do not recommend to create Acronis Secure Zone on a external hard drive if you wish to use Acronis Startup Recovery Manager. Please take a look at this FAQ article explaining the reason why we do not recommend it. If you do not plan to use Acronis Startup Recovery Manager then you create and use Acronis Secure Zone on the external hard drive.

Could you please collect the following information?

1) Create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post.

2) Also make a screen shot of Windows Disk Management by following Start -> Control Panel -> Performance and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
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Aleksandr Isakov