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How to remove Acronis protection

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I just got a new Laptop w/ Win 7 on it. I have Acronis True Image Home 2009, and just installed it on my new laptop. Not knowing exactly what it was (and w/o paying much attention, because the number was in MB, not GB), when I ran it the first time, it said something about protecting files and offered to do so, and I just said Yes. After re-starting, I find around 50GB missing on my drive now for a new partition that it created. I wasn't expecting that, and need that space. Is there some way to un-do that? Without really screwing things up?

Jesse

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For some reason I have to comment in order to save the "notify me when new comments are posted" (on this forum).

Try uninstalling True Image and see if it releases the 50Gb. If it does not, you should be able to just delete that partition and add it back to the rest of the drive.

Does this 50GB appear as a drive letter?

Check in Windows Disk Managment and see if you have a partition with no drive letter about 50GB large, FAT32 and possibly labelled as ASZ.

Check in your My Documents folder see if you have a folder labelled 'My Backups' and if so, see if there is a tib file there.

Check to see if you have a folder labelled TimeLine (this may be a hidden folder) if you have one, check to see if it has 50GB's worth of data in it. This is unlikely, but as you are unsure what TI might have done to cause the loss of 50GB it is best to see if it can be found before you uinstall TI.

If TI has made a Secure Zone - you should delete this from within TI before uninstalling TI, it will then correctly hand the space back to the C: partition or whatever partition is your main one.

If it is a Timeline folder then you can just as DwnNDrty suggests delete it as you can the tib file, though in that case the database will be out of sync, but that can be solved..

In the drive manager, I've got two partitions that I cannot identify, and that do not have drive letters. 1) One with no name, File System is blank, It is actually 118 GB (much larger than I thought), and says it is 100% free. 2) One labeled SYSTEM_DRV, it is using NTFS, and is only 1.17GB.

In the My Documents folder, I do have a folder labeled "My Backups", but I do have one labeled "MyBackups", and it is currently empty.

Where would the "TimeLine" folder be at? I have it set so I can see hidden folders, but I don't see a TimeLine folder either in My Documents or in the root of C:, or in "MyBackups".

I think the secure zone thing is what has actually happened here. Because now when I go to "Computer", I see a "Acronis Secure Zone" option there. It has no drive letters, but when I double-click on it, there is a file labeled "System Backup.tib" in there. When I view the details of this, I see the path is asz:\, so this must be the culprit.

So, it sounds like all I need to do is delete the secure zone in TI, and I should be OK, right? I do not want to uninstall TI as you seem to suggest, I just want my 118 GB back.

Jesse

Jesse,

The ASZ as you've discovered won't have a drive letter, this 'protects' it from Windows recognising it and fiddling with it.

I imagine your computer is a brand name one, if so the 1.17GB partition is probably a combination of the manufacturers recovery system and utilities.

To remove the ASZ, open TI2010, click on Tools & Utilities, select Manage Acronis Secure Zone.

Once you have selected delete, it will ask you where you want the freed space to be attached to. Here choose the C: partition.

As this missing space is not down to the Non Stop Backup utility, this means you haven't activated it and therefore the TimeLine folder won't exist.

BEFORE YOU DO THE ABOVE

It is a good idea if you have an external drive, to make a complete disk image of your system as it is now - just in case things don't go smoothly.
Also, make a rescue CD, boot from it, and make sure that you can see all your drives/partitions and that your mouse, keyboard, network etc are still all accessible.

Thanks, that did it. I'm actually running version 2009, but in the Tools menu at the top, it had the "Manage Acronis Secure Zone", and I was able to remove it. It went through it's motions, and I have my 118 GB back.

Thanks,
Jesse