Disk Director Does Not Detect Boot Disk C:
I initially posted this on the True Image Forum. I retrospect, the Disk Director Forum might be the more appropriate venue.
I am having difficulty in resolving an issue that seems to have to do with the MBR. It started when I used Disk Director Suite 10 to delete a redundant invisible partition, known as PQSERVICE, from the boot drive of an Acer computer. This partition was the first on the volume, and I resized the active partition C:/ to fill the now unused space.
While Win7 loads up just fine, I can no longer access drive C:/ with True Image Version Home 11.0 (8053) or Disk Director Suite 10.0 (2160) running in windows. I also cannot access the drive using these applications on the bootable Acronis Rescue CD.
I have tried the solution in Bulletin “1515: Acronis Product Does Not Detect Hard Disks in Windows - disks are detected in file/folder backup mode only”. This doesn’t work. When I use DISKPART> clean, I get the following error:
Virtual Disk Service Error:
Clean is not allowed on the disk containing the current boot,
system, pagefili, crashdump or hibernation volume.
I’m stumped. I have a new full image backup of this disk, but I can’t use it to restore the drive. I thought it would be an easy out if I ran into a problem, but it’s not. Has anyone had success in resolving this type of issue, or one similar? Any help or suggestions would be greatly appteciated.
Thank you for your reply. True Image Version Home 11.0 (8053) and Disk Director Suite 10.0 (2160) seemed to run very well in Windows 7. Perhaps I’ve missed something, and progress has caught up with me. The original bootable rescue CD created from my installed applications would not recognize the drive in either TI or DD.
I downloaded the current available bootable CD images for DD 10.0 and TI 11.0. While DD 10.0 would not detect the C: partition, TI 11.0 did. I can now see what has happened. It appears that my original rescue CD for Disk Director Suite 10.0 (2160), did not delete the PQSERVICE partition as planned. It was simply resized to 0 bytes and left at it’s original position as the fist partition, now unnamed. This is likely where the MBR now resides. C: partition was resized to fill the then unallocated space.
I now have to figure out how to delete that 0 byte unnamed partition, then restore the MBR to drive C. Do you have any thoughts as to how I might go about this? I’m a fan of Acronis products, and have no qualms about upgrading as required. Would an upgrade to DD 11.0 allow me to reconfigure this volume and have TI 11.0 (8053) detect the volume for backing up? I would appreciate any help you might give.
Can you post a screenshot of what Disk Management shows? It may help to see it.
TI 11 and DD 11 and not compatible. If you want both TI and DD installed in Windows 7, you would need TI 2010/2011 and DD 11. TI 11 would need to be uninstalled first (which may be problematic).
Thank you for your help with this. You now have me back on track. I have downloaded and installed the latest TI 11.0 (8101) update. This is now detecting the drive, and there is no compatibility issue. I tried to install the latest update to DD 10.0. You where correct, as I received the non-compatible error message and the install was aborted.
I have upgraded to DD 11.0 (2121), and this detects the drive. I should be able to resolve my dilemma, now that I can see what I have to deal with. It seems that I still not only have the two partitions, but also a MBR in each. Sometimes we can get so focused on a problem that the proximate cause eludes us. The fresh perspective of another person can work wonders in problem solving. Thank you again for your help. If I cannot resolve the issue I will post again.