Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free shows partition as Not formatted

Hello all.
I've searched & checked a similar thread on the forum (Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14 - C Drive showing as not formatted) but I think my situation is a little different, and anyway there's no real solution in that thread.

I'm running Windows 7 on a Toshiba laptop with two Toshiba HDs (as-is from the manufacturer). HD0 has system partition and other "recovery"/hidden small partitions. HD1 has data partition and other "recovery"/hidden small partitions as well.

Recently PBR is having troubles in "seeing" HD1 and its partitions. I think (not 100% sure) it all started recently when I upgraded from PBR 2010 to PBR 2014. I noticed that the HD1 scheduled backups produced suddenly a much larger backup, almost as big as the whole HD, while before size was more related to actual used size.

I then checked PBR and noticed following:

1. Data partition in HD1 appears red-colored and as "not formatted", while in Windows Disk Management and 3rd party partitioning tools it is correctly NTFS formatted
2. Data partition in HD1 appears without dirve letter, even when it actually has one. I tried removing letter from other tool, then assign letter through PBR. The letter was actually assigned, but after restarting PBR the Data partition appeared without letter.
3. I tried to shrink/expand Data partition as suggested in this page for a similar issue, but with no luck
4. I checked this Bitlocker-related article but it was not my case, I don't have bitlocker running, and I don't have any other encryption/locking tool installed.
5. I ran partition verify tools and chkdsk and no error at all was reported.

As you can imagine, the main problem is that the Data partition looks to PBR as a whole "blob". This extends when inspecting an HD1 archived backup: there's no file, only a huge (red unformatted) partition inside.

Is there any help I can get?

PS please find here attached some screenshots:

PBR Disk map
http://i.imgur.com/HDlBQdL.png

PBR Disk partition list
http://i.imgur.com/JnTrVkq.png

PBR Archive restore wizard
http://i.imgur.com/WsPh3fw.png

Other tool (MiniTool Partition home wizard)
http://i.imgur.com/AXAHmq1.png

 

I tried with removing PBR 2014 and installing PBR 2013: still same situation.

I tried with old PBR 2010 (the one I had on my machine before all this started), and the partition instead looks fine: formatted, letter assigned, regular color.

See screenshot attached:
Paragon Backup & Recovery 2010 Disk View
http://i.imgur.com/SnrQA3Q.png

No changes made at disks and partitions in the meantime.

What can I try in order to make it work with latest PBR version and stay up-to-date?
TA

 

Perhaps an alignment problem. You could try aligning the partition using Partition Wizard.

 

Thanks for your suggestion.
I already have MiniTool Partition Wizard, although I think I never knew about that function.
I'll try that and see how it goes.
Cheers

EDIT: After trying with alignment
Summary: that didn't work.
I used Partition Wizard to align partitions on that hard drive. That actually found something in need to be aligned: even if Data partition is the first on its drive, the tool moved things around, and if I recall correctly it mentioned to move the LBA off of 2048 (Kb?).

After I rebooted, unistalled PBR 2010 (installing PBR 2014 and taking advantage of previous versions automatic removal didn't worked), rebooted, installed PBR 2014.
When opening PBR 2014, still the same thing: red colored, unformatted partition.
Looking at partition properties (attached), probably the "first physical sector" reflects the alignment change, but apart from that nothing really new.

Is there something else I can try?

Attachment:
PBR Properties after alignment
http://i.imgur.com/qYFF7AT.png

 

One apparent difference I can think of, is that PBR 2010 is still a 32bit program (it gets installed in Program Files (x86)), while PBR 2014 is a 64bit program.

I tried installing PBR 2014 32bit on this Windows 64bit, but that was not allowed.

I don't remember if PBR 2013 (which shows unformatted partition) is 64bit as well or not.

Anyone has suggestions?

Thanks

 

To clarify (although this is irrelevant to your problem), 2048 refers to the number of sectors. Each sector is normally 512 bytes. So, 2048 sectors are equivalent to 1024 kB.