[QUESTION] "Ghost partitions" very likely caused by Acronis
Hello everyone,
I have a very strange situation on my computer.
I have 3 partitions with drive letters but they are neither visible in the drive management, nor Disk Director nor diskpart, so I cannot even delete them. I cannot unassign the drive letters, using diskpart.
Very annoyingly I am pretty sure that both partitions must be the MSR partitions of my 2 physical GPT drives. However I cannot understand why they are not enlisted and I cannot configure them with diskpart attrib.
I am not 100% sure but I think they became visible and mounted after trying out Acronis Secure Zone and ATIH Startup Recovery Manager.
Hope anyone can help me, as I have no recent backup without that error (shame on me).
Karl,
I don't think I can be of much help here never having used ASRM nor ASZ but in hopes to clarify for some readers I believe the partitions you refer to are those with the letters E, F, and G. These teste and testg partitions being 127MB in size would indeed appear to be copies of the MSR partitions. The F partition I see is assigned to the EFI system reserve 300MB partition which should not have a drive letter.
Quite strange that diskpart is of no help here. Have you checked using diskpart the partition attributes of these offending partitions? They might be in read only mode and if so that attribute would need to be changed so that drive letter unassignment for example could be carried out.
Just in case--
In Windows Explorer, RIGHT CLICK on each of the ghost partitions.
In the right click menu, see if the right click option has a TrueImage option listed.
If TI option listed, check if there is an "unmount" option listed.
Hi again, thanks for your comments.
@Nils I have parititions in Explorer but they do not appear as Partitions in diskpart or Disk Director, or Windows Disk Management
@Enchantech, I cannot change or view partition details as the partition as the command "attrib" can only handle DISK or volume but the E and G are not enlisted in the "list volume".
@Grover, I thought about those could be mounted drives from a tib file, but as I have checked them again, there are no mounted TIB drives, also the drive icon would be different and there is no unmounting possible in the context menu.
Karl,
I would be inclined to say that the Disk Director and diskpart views are correct and these partitions do not in fact exist on disk.
Therefore the view in Explorer is in error. That makes me wonder if these partitions are showing because they were reported to Windows as removable drives when created and when your trial of ASZ and ASRM were over these removable drives were not ejected corrected thus leaving the drive letters still appearing in Explorer.
Can these partitions be seen in Windows Disk Management or can they be viewed using the Safely Remove Devices icon found in the task bar?
If they appear in the Safely Remove Devices list I would say it is a pretty safe bet that these are simply leftovers from your trials and could be "removed" by choosing to eject them from the list.
Hi Enchantech,
nothing of that works (not visible in eject, not visible in Windows Disk Management). :(( I really wonder why Explorer shows them as volume with driveletters and all other tools not.
Karl,
That;s a good question. I wonder too why ASRM and ASZ would create such small partitions? I do know that ASRM overwrites the Windows boot record with its own so that could be related here. I suppose that Secure Zone would need some sort of file table as well so maybe that is why those partition exist.
Do you have any idea how your EFI partition got a drive letter assigned to it?
Karl,
That's a good question. I wonder too why ASRM and ASZ would create such small partitions? I do know that ASRM overwrites the Windows boot record with its own so that could be related here. I suppose that Secure Zone would need some sort of file table as well so maybe that is why those partition exist.
Do you have any idea how your EFI partition got a drive letter assigned to it?
Karl,
Run regedit.exe and navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevives. Delete the keys that show your unwanted drive letters. Reboot and see if the unwanted drive letters come back.
Try open registry and find it in HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices.
Hey guys,
this problem seems to be "awesome"... I've never seen such an inconsistency within Windows. I really consider to reinstall my Win 10 for the purpose of solving it (hopefully).
I have deleted the entries from the registry, still the drives do appear after a restart.
In fact after restarting Windows these ghost drives even recreated their entries under HKLM\System\MountedDevices
I am still pretty sure that they are MSR partitions etc not something ASZ or ASM created but I wonder how the heck something can configure a visible drive letter and partition while it is invisible for the rest of the OS except Explorer (and registry).
"Do you have any idea how your EFI partition got a drive letter assigned to it?"
No I have literally no idea why this should happen and why they are invisible to diskpart partitions or Drive management / Disk Director on the other hand.
Hi I have "refreshed" my Windows 10 meanwhile and this made the drives to disappear.