TI10 deletes drive letter on external HD

Discussion in 'Acronis True Image Product Line' started by John Dalton, Jan 8, 2007.

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  1. John Dalton

    John Dalton Registered Member

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    I have True Image 10 running under Windows XP Home Edition.

    My Acronis Secure Zone is on my 250GB external HD (Drive G) which has a USB 2.0 connection to my PC. When I change the size of the Secure Zone this drive G disappears from Windows Explorer. This was rather worrying, to say the least, the first time it happened, but after a bit of searching I discovered that when Acronis partitions my G drive to create the Secure Zone it deletes the drive letter, G. The problem can be cured by resetting the drive letter to G using Disk Management, but it needs to be done each time I change the Secure Zone size.

    The problem is obviously liveable with, but it is extremely annoying. Is this a known problem or is it just my set-up, and is there any cure for it?
     
  2. Xpilot

    Xpilot Registered Member

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    Part of the security of the secure zone is that it does NOT have a drive letter and is thus invisible to normal Windows operations. Giving it a drive letter seems to remove a lot of its effectiveness.

    It is not recommended by Acronis to have a secure zone on an external drive. I have my secure zone on a secondary internal drive. Such a drive is a lot faster particularly when making a restore.

    Xpilot
     
  3. John Dalton

    John Dalton Registered Member

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    Thanks for the reply. The problem is not with the Secure Zone itself - it does not have a drive letter and is invisible to Windows Explorer. The problem is that resizing the Secure Zone removes the drive letter from the rest of the HD thus rendering all its contents invisible to Windows Explorer until I restore the drive letter. Although I'd still like to know why this is, browsing the recent thread on deleting backups from the Secure Zone suggests that it would probably be just as well to get rid of the Secure Zone.

    Re using my external HD, it's simply a case of available space - its much larger (250GB) than my 2 internal HDs (40GB and 80GB). If I kept on using it, and assuming that my Windows drive needed restoring, would there be any problems in the Acronis disk recognising this external HD?
     
  4. Xpilot

    Xpilot Registered Member

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    Ah! I now understand. I had thought you only had the one secure zone partition on the external drive !

    As to that drive being recognised in a restore environment you could boot from the rescue CD and see how it goes. So long as you don't hit the proceed button you can back out at any time.

    I have no idea what caused the drive letter of the G drive to disappear. I no longer use USB drives for backup so I cannot reproduce the problem and I have not experienced it in the past as I never put a Secure Zone on an external drive.

    I do have a secure zone on an internal secondary HDD. There are also two other partitions there for paging and scratch areas. Those drive letters remain when the Zone is resized.


    Xpilot
     
  5. John Dalton

    John Dalton Registered Member

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    I'll bear in mind the info about checking being OK until you hit the Proceed button. I'm always chary of starting something that might have irrevocable consequences!
     
  6. Xpilot

    Xpilot Registered Member

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    You could of course mount a spare HDD in place of your current drive and then press the restore button in perfect safety. That is the best test of backup procedures that I know.
    It also gives you an effective useable HDD which you could go on using and keep the old one as a ready to replacement.

    Xpilot
     
  7. Acronis Support

    Acronis Support Acronis Support Staff

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    Hello John Dalton,

    Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

    We are sorry for the delayed response.

    Please check your hard disk for errors ("chkdsk X: /r", where X is the assigned letter of the respective hard disk).

    Please do the following to help us investigate the issue thoroughly:

    - Create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post with your USB drive plugged in;
    - Name the created report file report_before.txt ;
    - Reproduce the problem and create another Acronis Report immediately after;
    - Name the created report file report_after.txt

    Please also add a new small partition to the drive in question using the Windows partitioning tool (Windows Disk Management by following Start -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management -> Disk Management) or another software, and report if that will have the same effect of a letter loss.

    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.
    --
    Marat Setdikov
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2007
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