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Acronis Disk Director 10 (Build 2288)

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I just observed a strange thing on a PC I own.

On that PC I used Acronis Disk Director build 2160 to create partitions on the hard disk. On the first hard disk there are 2 primary partitions (XP and 7) and one logical partition. On the second hard disk there is just one primary partition for data.

I recently made a new bootable CD using the latest build 2288 of Acronis Disk Director. When I loaded Acronis Disk Director on that PC, there is an unallocated space of about 2-3 MB at the end of both hard disks. This is very strange since when I created the partitions using build 2160 I made sure there were no allocated space. Lo and behold when I use another bootable CD made using build 2160 there are no allocated spaces on the hard disk.

Does anybody know why such a thing is happening? Why does 2288 display partition information different from 2160? Can this be the sign of a problem with build 2288?

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James:

Note that it is standard practice for partitioning software to leave a little bit of unallocated space at the end of a disk in case you decide to convert your disk to a Windows Dynamic Disk. By convention, most partition managers will leave 1 cylinder (7.8 MB) of unallocated space at the end. Windows needs at least 1 MB of unallocated space at the end to use for dynamic volumes as described here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa363785%28VS.85%29.aspx

If you don't use dynamic volumes then you can resize the partition to remove the unallocated space. Just a guess on my part, but since Windows Disk Management is programmed not to show the small amount of unallocated space at the end of the disk in its graphical display, perhaps Acronis decided to make Disk Director behave similarly.

It could be that build 2160 was programmed this way and Acronis decided to change that behavior in the later builds, but this is just speculation on my part.

Inside this tutorial for PTS disk editor is a description of this "test cylinder", which does not always show up: http://mirror.href.com/thestarman/tool/de/PTS-DE.htm

Don't know if this helps explain why you see what you see, but I find it curious.