Problem w/ Secure Zone (ATI 9.0.2289)

I need help here with a problem I encountered w/ ATI 9 (2289).

I recently created a "Secure Zone" (appx. 22.22 gb) from space taken from my c:/ drive (108 gb). My new c:/ drive space after SZ creation was 86 gb.

I just tried to REMOVE the "Secure Zone" and allocate the free space BACK to my c:/ drive. I did all the necessary steps and received an "operation completed" message at the bottom when all was done.

So when I went to check if the 22 gb space had actually been returned to my C:/ drive.....I noticed that it is still showing at 86 gb (instead of 108 gb -- which was the size before I created Secure Zone).

Then I went to "Check Archive" and the "Secure Zone" partition was NO longer there....yet 22 gb of my drive is missing

Can someone please tell me how to restore/return this space back to my c:/ drive

Can this be done through ATI?

Any help would be greatly appreciate!!! Thank you in advance.

 

Anyone...PLEASE!!!

 

I have had the exact same problem. I tried the solution listed in the Acronis FAQ, namely to recreate a SZ and then remove it and specifically add the space to the C: partition. But doing that twice did not work. I am now defragmenting the disc, but I don't think it will work. I'll let you know.
DTC

 

^^^ Yeah I already tried creating another "Secure Zone" and tried removing it, but that did NOT work. Hopefully someone here will have a solution to this because I just lost 22 gigs on my HDD (which I really need)!!!

 

This is what the Acronis website states for this problem....

After removal of Acronis Secure Zone I found that the space I used to create it is lost. How can I get it back?

Such situation may occur when you do not add the space freed from Acronis Secure Zone to one of your partitions. Actually, the space isn't lost; it has become unallocated.

You can do the following in order to get the space back:

* Create an Acronis Secure Zone again using the unallocated space
* Remove Acronis Secure Zone by means of the Manage Acronis Secure Zone wizard, adding the space to a partition you want
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The problem in my case is that the Acronis SECURE ZONE is NOT showing up when I open the Wizard, thus the method they suggested will not work! How can I remove something that is NOT there?

 

Yeah. I tried all that too. I emailed Acronis. If I get a relavent reply, I'll post it. I have to say, I wish I had seen this entire forum b/f I bought this version 9 and also b/f I started running the secure zone etc. I probably would not have bought it. I hope I didn't screw my harddrive. I hate wasting time on this unnecessarily.
good luck and i'll let you know.

Dan

 

Any and all threats will be removed without further notice. This is a support forum where customers are able to seek help.

Let's keep things friendly and work together on solutions.

Blackspear.

 

This is extremely frustrating. Nothing seems to work. Even tried Partition Magic and all the options (merge, delete, redistribuate, etc) will NOT work with this partition. It is showing up as 22 gb w/ 0 space used. So apparently Acronis deleted the image but FAILED to redistribuate the free space back to it's original source.

The partition is showing up as [*] w/ no letter assigned to it? Does anyone know if formatting this partition will work or is that too risky?

Hopefully someone from Acronis will have an answer to this. Let me know Dan and thanks for your help. Seems like you and I are the only ones having this problem [sucks for us I guess]

 

The moderator removed my last post since he/she deemed it "threatening"... it was not.

I just bought an on-line download copy of Partition Magic 8.0 and applied a patch to make it 8.1 This did the trick. No doubt there are many who will report this problem shortly. You are far from being alone.

-FixItNow

 

Don't format it -- at best you'll end up with a C: of 22Mb and a D: for the rest of the drive - & windows will then loose track of your program paths.

I don't have an answer, and as I would not be able to see what any disk level s/w was saying, I'd be a bit wary.

A couple of things you could try -

Get hold of one of the Linux partition utilities or Ranish partition manager or even Nortons disk doctor - now that'd be the one that is on the rescue boot disk/CD and is a command line thingy NOT the Nortons DD that show up in windows from the utilities program.

Any of these will allow you to see how your drive is structured, and WITH CARE can be used to put the right magic number into the partition so that it can be seen.

I'm a little wary of MS FDISK or DISKPART, the latter because it is easy to make a mistake and not know it.

Colin

 

Sorry, make that 8.0 to 8.01 not 8.1

Here's the link to the Partition Magic patch...
http://www.softwarepatch.com/utilities/partition-magic-8.html

 

^^The latest version of PM is 8.05 and it's not working with this Acronis SZ partition. It's showing up as "[*] Unallocated" with NO letter assigned to it and it won't let me make any changes to it. Might have to try what bodgy recommended. Something has to work!

 

Hello Birdman,

It's a bit long winded without partition management software but the following procedure often recovers the unallocated space:

1. Start TI and use the Manage Acronis Secure Zone Wizard to create a temporary Secure Zone (SZ).
2. On the "Disk Selection" screen select the drive that contains your unallocated space and click "Next".
3. On the next screen, again select the drive that contains the unallocated space and then click "Next".
4. Create a small SZ of about 10GB by moving the slider accordingly. Click "Next".
5. Select the option "Do not activate Acronis Startup Recovery Manager" and then click "Next" followed by "Proceed". Depending on where the SZ was created, Windows may need to reboot to complete the creation.
6. Once the SZ has been created, use the Manage Acronis Secure Zone Wizard to remove the SZ.
7. In the "Redistributing Space" screen select the partition that you want to give the space to and then click "Next" followed by "Proceed". TI will then probably reboot and remove the SZ.
8. After finally rebooting into Windows, right click on "My Computer", select "Manage" > "Disk Management" and check that the unallocated space has been reassigned to your chosen partition/disk.

Regards

 

Of course it is showing up as unallocated space. That's what it is after the SZ was removed without instructing TrueImage to add the space back to one of the existing partitions.

You don't want to select the unallocated space in Partition Magic. Select the C partition and increase it's size by expanding C into the unallocated space.

Partition Magic will add the space you select, format it and make C the new size, presumably the size before you created the SZ if you expanded C into the entire unallocated space.

 

I did the above with PM 8.01 and it worked. All of the "unallocated" space was re-allocated to the original partition. Indeed, you do have to select the correct partition and increase its size to the max as indicated above.

If this doesn't work, then something more serious has happened.

-FixItNow

 

Birdman,

If you have an extra drive (could be a usb or firewire or network) you can do this.

Back up your main partition to one of those drives and verify it.

Next delete all partitions on your main drive

Next repartition the drive the way you want it

Next restore the backed up image to the new partition

I've done it many times

 

Alright guys, I FINALLY fixed this issue. Partition Magic did the trick. I was able to restore the space back to my c:/ drive. I created a NEW "Secure Zone" partition and stored a newly created image w/o any errors or problems.

I would like to thank EVERYONE for their time, help and suggestions. This is a great community, especially for people who are not computer savy like myself. Thanks once again!

Dan (dtcbos) if you read this.....try Partition Magic v8.05 to fix this issue. Just follow jmk94903's suggestion and you should be able to restore your space back. PM 8.05 is extremely user friendly. Good luck!

 

I tried the above solution multiple times (which is also listed in the FAQ) without any success.

After reading many of the posts here, I must acknowledge that I am comparatively a computer novice. I'd rather not have to purchase another program (some sort of partition management software) to fix a bug in TI which should never have existed.

Does anyone have any other suggestions? If I do need to buy a partition software, which one should I buy? Also, I only have a c: drive (and an external ethernet iomega netdrive, where I keep my TI image). If I remove this unallocated space that I see on my laptop's harddrive will it affect the data on the normally working and allocated c: drive?

thanks for anyone's advice.

and no thanks to Acronis which has yet to respond to my repeated emails for help. . . .

Dan

 

Hi Dan,

I would definitely recommend Norton Partition Magic. From the reviews that I've read, it's supposed to be one of the best. Just search eBay and you can find it for a fraction of the retail cost (that's where I purchased mine from). Hope this helps.

 

Really? This -

Sounds just a little bit threatening to me.

 

Detox,

A backup product from a company whose motto is “Compute with Confidence” deserves criticism in any public forum when the product performs so poorly. To recover from the faulty software I had to-

1. spend 3 late night hours trying to recover a “secure zone”
2. spend about $50 to download a product (Partition Magic) which allowed me to recover from the damage caused by the product
3. (in an attempt to solve the problem) seek out public forums where others had experienced the same problem

Incidentally, the “secure zone” issue is only one of several issues with this release of the product. In addition to this problem, I couldn’t use a USB2 drive as a backup target. And, there were other problems… read the other posts. This is particularly egregious given that your customers are purchasing the software to protect themselves from system failures. The irony is that your product may provide a false sense of security which is counter to its purpose.

These days, the only reliable method for revealing the true nature of buggy, poorly tested software is for customers to post their comments on forums, etc. It’s not “threatening” to exercise free speech. I note the trailing quote in your post and I don’t think that Thomas Jefferson would approve.

The truth is that this release is a mess. It needs to be fixed.

Also, I note that no one from the company managed to provide a solution. YOUR CUSTOMERS HAD TO PROVIDE THE SOLUTION.

In short, stop getting your customers to test your software and you won’t have these responses.

 

#1 - I have no customers. Clearly; you have (once again) failed to realize that I am simply a "no profit" volunteer moderator as all the other Wilders GMs happen to be.

#2 - (and truly I think you should address this instead of ignore it as in the last post while attempting to accuse me of some sort of underhanded "dealings") -

Are you still insisting that this is not a "threat?" I fail to fathom what else this might be, to be perfectly honest. I'll eagerly await your response to the question (statement?) posed in not only my earlier post but this one as well.

Nobody here, including myself (you might take note) has claimed that there are no issues regarding the recent builds of ATI. However, it would seem a bit counterproductive (hey - ask around ;-) ) to post in a manner aimed towards conflicting with moderators as opposed to directing your posts toward Acronis Support in order to actually help them to help you. Hey - you don't have to listen to me anyway - after all - if you actually understood my signature quote you would realize that Thomas Jefferson (along with a few of my ancestors) managed to provide their own medium with which to express their freedom... They didn't count on Count Chocula to provide the paper, eh?

 

Hello!
i had the same problem, so these evening i wrote to support by mail.
I hope they will give me a reply, even if i'm a trial user.
Bye
Mauro

 

I had been emailing repeatedly with customer service. They sent me a program to run a diagnostic and I sent back the info and then it would take another few days to get the next reply which had the same info as the FAQ. After many long pauses and my repeated emails they finally sent me a link for a 15 day download of Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0. I never ended up using it b/c in the interim I finally found a copy of Norton Partition Magic and it fixed this problem in a snap. So unfortunately, 2 thumbs down for Acronic support. Too slow!!! and who knows if they will even acknowledge that this is a problem. I should have read this forum b/f I bought this product. Lesson learned.

Dan
Boston, MA

 

Hi Dan,

Glad to hear that all is well with your HDD once again.

Acronis really needs to step up their support because there's really NO excuse for this many errors/bugs with their product.

Why even release a newer version when it's this corrupt? This is what BETA TESTING is for!!!