Skip to main content

TIH 2010 on Win7: how can I recover all the GB that were eaten by just one Try&Decide session?

Thread needs solution

Today I ran Try&Decide for ths first time. Before I enabled it my C: partition had some 8 - 9 GB free space. After enabling it there still were some 5 GB free. Then I played with some new programs, and finally discarded the installations. After discarding and disabling T&D, and after the restart there were less than 3 GB left!

So I thought I was smart and recovered the C: partition's backup I had created just before running T&D the first time. But to my surprise this didn't recover any of the lost hard drive space.

Also I found some topic here in the forum regarding TIH 2009 that was talking about a \LoaderData folder. Which is not on my drive, nor are there any "x*.bin" files to be found on partition C:

So I assume that there must be some sort of "stealth" partition somewhere on my hdd, but I can't see it from my computer management setup.

Yes, I have local admin rights to my system, so I think I should be able to see what I want to see. And yes, I have set folder options to show me hidden and system files etc. Then, on the other hand, I'm still quite new to Win7, so maybe there are more details hidden from me than I realize.

Please, anyone, help me get back my valuable GBs!!

Thanks a lot,

Lothar

0 Users found this helpful

To reclaim the space you should be able to use TI and just de-activate T&D, this should re-assign the partition back to where it came from.

Check in Windows Disk Management - (In W7) click on the windows start button, and right click Computer on the right side tab, choose Computer Management\Storage\Disk Management and see if there is a T&D entry there.  I think T&D works by making an expandable folder a bit like the Windows page file works rather than making a new partition, but T&D is one thing I haven't played with in 2010 as yet.

Wow, this is getting even weirder now! But let me reply first:

bodgy wrote:

To reclaim the space you should be able to use TI and just de-activate T&D, this should re-assign the partition back to where it came from.

Yep, that's what I had done in the first place. Didn't do.

bodgy wrote:

Check in Windows Disk Management - (In W7) click on the windows start button, and right click Computer on the right side tab, choose Computer Management\Storage\Disk Management and see if there is a T&D entry there.

Nope, nothing there...

bodgy wrote:

I think T&D works by making an expandable folder a bit like the Windows page file works rather than making a new partition, but T&D is one thing I haven't played with in 2010 as yet.

That's what I thought, but no hidden or visible folder, no huge binary file or whatever.

OK, so I got curious and re-enabled T&D once more. Guess what: after re-enabling T&D I now have roughly double the amount of disk space available on drive C: than without that mode (before: 2.8 GB; after 5.5 GB)! So next thing I'll try is  to quit T&D but this time keeping the changes; since I didn't change anything really this seems to be harmless.

Update: back from the system restart: no, disk space now is back to the old value (2.8 GB). I don't think this is right, really!

-Lothar

Sounds as though T&D isn't marking the used sectors as 0xFF to return them back to free space.

bodgy wrote:
Sounds as though T&D isn't marking the used sectors as 0xFF to return them back to free space.

right, that's what I think. Question is: how can I get the space back?

Hello all,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

This issue is related to incorrect clean up of folders responsible for Try&DEcide settings. In some cases, program is unable to delete these files when you discard\apply changes. To bring your space back, please check C:\LoaderData folder (it's hidden) and delete its contents, this one is responsible for Try&Decide files, our program creates several files each time you enable this feature.

Thank you.