How to get rid of Acronis Startup Recovery Manager partition

Roger, welcome to these User Forums.

The 500MB Partition being shown in your Disk Management screen shot is totally unrelated to the Acronis Startup Recovery Manager (ASRM) but is a part of your Windows OS, so I would totally avoid trying to remove this partition unless you wish to turn your computer into a cabbage!

For reference ASRM does not create any partition at all, it simply modifies the Windows Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store to provide a 'F11' key option on boot, which will boot the computer into a small Linux Kernel OS environment from which to launch Acronis True Image.

The only time when ATI will create a partition is if you enable the Acronis Secure Zone (ASZ) which always takes space from the end of the disk drive and creates a FAT32 partition of the size that you specify.

The 500MB NTFS System / Active partition is where your Windows BCD data is stored, this partition is commonly known as the System Reserved partition and is required to allow Windows to boot correctly.

See Microsoft webpage: Understanding Disk Partitions which discusses the various partitions that you may see.  Note: that this is an old document from 2009 and Windows 7, so the sizes mentioned have changed with later versions of Windows, where 500MB is more common for Windows 10 systems.

Hi, Steve

Thanks a lot for very solid information.

If possible, please help me understand the following:

Steve: >> "For reference ASRM does not create any partition at all, it simply modifies the Windows Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store to provide a 'F11' key option on boot, which will boot the computer into a small Linux Kernel OS environment from which to launch Acronis True Image."

Where is this small Linux kernel OS environment installed? Who put it there? ATI during its own installation? For sure this was not done by Windows installation. And, after booting Linux, from where will it pick up the files needed to launch that simplified True Image?

Roger, I am only able to direct you to the ATI 2014 User Guide: Acronis Startup Recovery Manager which has as much detail as Acronis have deemed to share about this feature.

My own understanding (rightly or not) is that ASRM modifies the boot process to provide the F11 key option, and this in turn points to data stored in the installed ATI application from which to launch the Linux OS environment, where this is retained solely in the computer memory, thus allowing for the Windows OS & Programs partition to be recovered.

I have just activated ASRM on my laptop and it does not create any new partition or any obvious new folders etc.

Roger,

Your system is using the  500 MB partition to boot Windows. I can see it is shown as the Active system partition. You can not delete it! The 500 MB partition also includes the Windows Recovery environment.

When you enabled ASRM, Acronis created a small folder containing the Linux recovery program in the 500 MB partition along side the Windows Recovery folder. It also created an entry in the BCD file in Windows referring to that small folder. When you deactivated ASRM, the BCD entry for it was disabled. The small folder with the Linux recovery program does get left behind in the 500 MB partition. It is possible to remove the small folder, but there is nothing to be gained by doing so. Leaving the folder behind is completely harmless.  

Thank you Steve and Mustang. Now it is very clear that I must NOT touch that partition and so I will leave it alone and forget about it.

But one question still remains: who created that 500 MB partition? Windows does not even give it a letter. How ATI recognized that partition and wrote Linux stuff on it? My guess is that when I installed ATI, it created that 500 MB partition.

Here is a better view of the disk:

Steve told he activated ASRM and no extra partition was created. So, activating ASRM does not create extra partitions.

On the other side, before I installed Windows 10 on that Hard Drive, it was completely clean, no partitions at all. Then I installed Windows and I am pretty sure that, at the end of the installation of Windows, there wasn't any small (500 MB) partition at the beginning of the disk.

I've tried to contact Acronis official support but the Support page says that there is no more support for ATI 2014.

Again, thank you both very much for the help (and sorry for my poor English :))

I'm sure Windows did create the 500 MB partition when you installed it. Acronis doesn't create a partition for ASRM. It finds the recovery partition and writes to that location. You can see the location by opening a command window as administrator and entering the following line:

reagentc /info

The output will tell you if WindowsRE is enabled or disabled and give you a "global" path to the Recovery folder if it is enabled. That path can be used to write to the partition without there being a drive letter assigned to it.

Thank you guys. Your efforts are guiding me toward  the best understanding of what happened.

I made a full backup of the entire disk to an external USB disk (one tera byte).

Then I opened the resulting *.tib image using the Windows 10 File Explorer.

I could then see its internal structure. Here is it:

>> C: is of course the major, 160GB, the second partition, where Windows 10 OS and programs reside.

>> "NTFS (1-1)" is the name that ATI gave to the 500 MB partition, the first one in the disk. Above it is shown partially "opened" (there are stil several files inside its branches that could not be shown in this partial screen capture).

It seems that no Linux folder is there anymore.

Inside  \Recovery\WindowsRE we have:

And inside \Recovery\Logs we have:

Now, using the recommended command  reagentc /info I got:

=================================================

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.15063]
(c) 2017 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /info
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:

    Windows RE status:         Enabled
    Windows RE location:       \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition1\Recovery\WindowsRE
    Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: be910b23-56b1-11e7-804d-d410dd71a4a8
    Recovery image location:
    Recovery image index:      0
    Custom image location:
    Custom image index:        0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

====================================================

Here go my FINAL questions (I promise :)))

Can I say for sure that Windows created this 500 MB partition itself? Nothing to do with Acronis True Image? Does Windows use it to recover a system when we cannot boot it?

If YES, it makes sense. Much after installing Windows 10 and much after installing ATI 2014, and much after having activating ASRM, I had [a few times] to use Windows System Restore (restore point) to get my system back to booting again. All these recoveries took a long time. Perhaps, in the very first System Restore ... that partition was created.

Or was it created just when I first installed Windows 10?

If so, everybody with Windows 10 must have that very same 500 MB partition at the beggining of their disks.

Roger

ATI did not create the 500 MB partition. Windows 10 created it when you installed Windows in the first place.

Windows 10 never boots from the C drive partition directly. There is always a System partition with the Boot code. In your case, it is the 500 MB partition at the beginning of the disk. That partition serves a dual purpose. It contains the boot code and also contains the Windows Recovery Environment.

Your assumption that every Windows 10 system has a 500 MB partition at the beginning of the disk is completely wrong. It is true that every Windows 10 system has a small "System" partition it boots from. Some systems have as many as 4 or 5 partitions. Windows 10 can be installed in two different ways. This depends on how the installation DVD was booted during the install. There are two ways to boot the DVD on modern UEFI computers. The two ways are Legacy mode and UEFI mode. If you boot the DVD in Legacy mode, Windows will set itself up to boot in Legacy mode. If you boot the DVD in UEFI mode and the system is 64 bit, Windows will set itself up to boot in UEFI mode. I know your system is booting in Legacy mode because you only have two partitions. Your disk is a MBR disk. Assuming your motherboard is UEFI capable (and I think it is) , it means you booted the DVD in Legacy mode during the initial installation. If you had booted the DVD in UEFI mode, the disk would look very different. It would have been converted from MBR to GPT and Windows 10 would have created 4 partitions. It would then boot in UEFI mode.

I could go much further in explaining the sizes of the Windows partitions, but that would just get you even more confused. The bottom line is that your system is fine. Don't touch it.

Roger wrote: 

"If so, everybody with Windows 10 must have that very same 500 MB partition at the beginning of their disks."

In addition to the good information provided by Paul in his replies.  The key aspect here is the state of the drive when Windows was installed.

If the drive was raw / empty, then Windows creates the hidden 128MB - 500MB partition to hold the boot / recovery code - the size depending on how large the drive is.

If the drive already had existing partitions, then no new partition is created for the boot code, this is stored in a hidden folder on the OS partition.

I have the second scenario on most of my computers because these were installed / upgraded from older versions of Windows and I told the installer which partition to use.  On my laptop, I have 2 copies of Windows 10 installed as dual-boot, but the boot code resides in the first of those copies, shared with the second copy of the OS.

See webpage: How to Delete Recovery Partition in Windows 10/8/7 Safely? which has a good write up on this topic.  Note: this is only dealing with the Recovery partition, it is never safe to delete the System Reserved / EFI partition when it hosts the Boot data.

Steve and Paul,

Now I have a much better understanding of my situation. Of course I need to study the subject a lot more, to be up to date with these modern types of disks / BIOS / partitions / OS's. As a start, I will follow the links you provided.

And I will not touch my 500 MB partition :)

Many thanks for all the help.

The best way to learn is to try thinks. If I were you, I would get a spare drive (SSD) to play with. An SSD will boot Windows 10 so much faster that a spinning HDD. I would remove the existing drive and replace it with the new drive. I would make sure the Windows 10 installation DVD was booted in UEFI mode and install Windows 10. I would disconnect the computer from the internet for the new install of Windows. That way you will not use up a Windows activation for a system you may not want to keep. After the install, you can look at the partition structure. Keep in mind Windows Disk Management will not show one of the small partitions created during the install. It is a partition called Microsoft System Reserved and is usually 128 or 16 MB depending on the version of Windows 10 you have. There will also be a Recovery partition. The size of that will also vary depending on the version of Windows 10. It is usually between 350 to 650 MB. On a new install, it will be the first partition on the disk. The Windows Recovery Environment will be in that partition. Following that will be a 100 MB System/EFI partition that will be formatted FAT32. Windows will use this partition to store the boot code. Next will be the 128 or 16 MB Microsoft System Reserved partition which will be unformatted. Next will be the C drive Windows partition that will fill the remaining space on the disk. In the future when Microsoft upgrades to a new version of Windows 10, a second Recovery partition may or may not get created at the end of the disk. This happens when the new winre.wim file is too big to fit in the existing Recovery partition. The original Recovery partition will be left behind, so there will be 5 partitions on the disk. You can see why people get confused by all of this.

You can use diskpart to see all the partitions on the disk. Open a command window as administrator and enter the following lines:

diskpart

list volume

After you see the list of partitions, enter the following line to exit diskpart before closing the command window:

exit

Paul, thanks again. I really appreciated your cooperation. Thanks for spending so much of your time with my problem.

Now, a new problem... Perhaps I should open a new thread, but anyway, there is a relationship with the above subject. So, here it goes:

Yesterday I let Windows install its Fall Creators update. It took 1,5 hours! A new partition appeared at the END of the disk, with 469 MB.

The computer is working quite well. The only problem is that now, at every boot, I get the following pop-up alert:

I think that my True Image 2014 got too old. Now it seems to be incompatible with Windows 10. Maybe its capability of making new images is compromised. Or, worst, the already-made images may now be unreliable. Or is this just a minor inconvenience? Is there a workaround?

Roger, all you need to do is to go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Acronis\TrueImageHome and launch the TrueImageMonitor.exe again and it will run fine.

Whilst ATI 2014 is not officially supported for use on Windows 10 by Acronis, I have been seeing the exact same error on my Windows 10 1709 (Fall Creators) laptop running ATI 2018 latest build - not on every boot, but certainly regularly enough that I have created a shortcut to the above .exe to make it easy to relaunch it.  I am blaming Microsoft for this issue as I also get the same error for some other random .exe files too, again intermittently.

Roger, you're welcome. I'm glad I told you about Windows creating a new Recovery partition at the end of the disk when there is an upgrade. You just saw it happen.

Steve, all understood. Nevertheless, do we really need TrueImageMonitor.exe? What about just modifying some configuration somewhere in order to prevent it to be launched at boot time? Will ATI 2014 still be reliable with this new Windows 10 (when creating new images and/or restoring old images)?

Paul, congratulations for thre 100% correct prediction. Thanks! And, any comments about TrueImageMonitor.exe?

Roger, please see KB 44350: Acronis True Image 2015/2014: Processes and Services which gives a description of the purpose of each of the Acronis programs & services, to help in any decision about stopping or disabling any of these.

Thanks, Steve. I used the link you provided. I found on that page, among other info:

"TrueImageMonitor.exe - Displays tray notifications about the task status and allows user interaction".

Only these functionionalities? Disappointing... Seems useless, considering the current situation.

Perhaps the best action would be to disable it for good.

I found TrueImageMonitor.exe in the Startup section of Task Manager. Here is a cut of the screen capture:

Right clicking on top of the "Acronis True Image Monitor (2) " line opens a menu which let me change its status to DISABLED.

Roger, the only other advice on this subject would be to simply test that everything you need to do with ATI 2014 is still working with the program disabled.

OK, Steve. I will do that and see what happens. Thanks for replying.