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Acronis has eaten some of my CF card!

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How can I get back partition space on my Compact Flash card?!

I was wanting to try Try&Decide on my Windows 7 laptop with TI2009. The option to select a location was greyed out and I was directed to created a Secure Zone partition. I was unable to do this on the local HDD, I'm guessing because it already has the maximum number of partitions (Came with 2 hidden partitions, C: and D:).

I then thought I'd try it on an external device - there was nothing to suggest this was a Bad Idea. I created a Secure Zone partition, 5 GBs of my 16GB flash card. This did not complete properly and I could not use the partition. I then tried an external 6GB USB HDD. The Secure Zone was created but  though Try&Decide now gave me the option to start, it failed (for no good reason). I then thought I'd at least get my space back, so removed the CF Secure Zone, but it didn't reintegrate the partition with the rest. Now the CF card does no appear on the Windows 7 laptop at all! It appears on my XP desktop, but only as an 11GB drive.

How do I remove the partition and restore my CF card to it's full capacity?

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Hello David,

No worries, I will help you to resolve the issue.

First of all - it's strongly not recommended to create Acronis Secure Zone on removable HDD's and CF cards, since this partition must be trackable from internal True Image database, and removing this drive or card will delete the reference to Secure Zone. Furthermore, activating Try & Decide in this case may cause a boot issue and broke your system

Let's get your card space back. Since Acronis Secure Zone is a special hidden partition (formatted as Fat 32 filesystem) you should use any formatting tool to format the entire card space. But please copy all necessary information from card prior formatting.

For example, you may try standard Windows XP tool - Disk Management (Start->Run->diskmgmt.msc), choose your card from the list and click Format, this should delete the partition.

Also, you may try Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0, its trial version is available here. Trial version will show you how the software is going to work, however you will not be able to commit any changes. You can also create a small partition (7.8Mb)

I'd like to make sure all your queries regarding Acronis products are resolved.
Additionally to this, you are welcome to ask me any other questions concerning Acronis, and I will assist you further.

Thank you.

Thanks for the quick, accurate reply! diskmgmt.msc worked and I have my 16GBs back, thanks!

As for a local Secure Zone, Acronis did not report why it failed, but my guess is a partition limit on the drive? It's a Lenovo laptop with "One Click Restore", and reserved space for this. Because it didn't come with a true Windows 7 restore disk, I'm hesitant to delete the partitions. A friend reckons that booting works through a 200 MB hidden partition before booting from C:. The factory settings only had 30 GB of data (D:) on a 320GBs HDD! I tried to create my own data partition but was informed through Windows partition tool that the drive had its maximum number of partitions. Lenovo wouldn't explain anything, so I've just left things as they are, other than shifting the partition borders.

If it's possible for me to create a proper Secure Zone on the internal HDD, I'd certainly like to do it! Is this a hardware limit I'm hitting though?

Hello David,

I'm glad that you were able to get your space back by using Disk Management snap-in!

Yes, we have experienced some compatibility issues in the past, when one create Acronis Secure Zone on a laptop with built in recovery partition.

It's possible to create Secure Zone in your case, since we have fixed all compatibility issues in the current version - Acronis True Image Home 2010 build 6053, which is available here. To get access to updates you should first register Acronis software.

Also, there's one important suggestion: please do not remove build-in recovery partition from your laptop. Also, please do not exclude it from backup and recovery process. Otherwise it may cause a boot issue.

Please let me know if you need any further assistance.

Regards,