A strange side effect on attempting to re-clone

Greetings

My system is a Gateway FX6831 system running Windows 7 Home Premium x64, fully updated; and the Acronis True Image Home version I use is 2011. The computer has one internal hard drive, labeled C:. There is also a hidden SYSTEM RESERVED folder which had never been assigned any drive letter in the past. The Gateway system (like many computer manufacturers' systems) also has a PQSERVICE (so that in theory the computer can be returned to factory default conditions using Gateway software).

Some time in the past I bought a 'My Books Essential' WD external hard drive which I used to successfully clone an image of the entire drive C: onto it.

Today, I decided it was high time I made a new clone of my Gateway drive C: (i.e. my entire computer's contents) on the same external drive, the WD one which had the old clone.

(I have already backed all my essential data on another external drive and I keep two copies of them, so I am not concerned about the data here.)

I started Acronis, chose "Go to Main Screen" and then "Tools & Utilities". From there I went to 'Disk management' and chose "Clone disk". I used the Gateway C: as the Source disk and the WD drive as the destination (its drive letter assigned to it is L:). Since the WD drive contained important partitions and files, Acronis asked if I wanted to delete them so we could proceed to the cloning and I said yes. Acronis then said that a reboot was required (and if I canceled that the cloning request would also be canceled). So I chose to reboot the computer. During reboot, Acronis analyzed the disk partitions and reported 'Error: Disk not found' and prompted me to reboot again by pressing any key. I did so, it said 'gRebooting' and then the computer was rebooted again and after Acronis informed me that its operation was 'completed', I was brought back to Windows desktop when the restart was completed. As soon as I entered Windows, the Acronis icon appeared on the bottom right claiming 'operation has started' but very soon the icon disappeared, presumably because the (cloning) operation was abandoned (due to that disk error it had encountered during boot-up).

I repeated the same procedure, with exactly the same results.

So what I am doing right now is slow-reformatting the external drive (as a default NTFS drive) and will attempt to clone my system C: on it again later.

However, this entire message is written here because this entire process had a strange side-effect.

After Acronis' failed attempt to clone my drive C: to the external drive, I now find that SYSTEM RESERVED also appears as a logical drive, assigned the next available letter after C: (D: and E: are reserved for a DVD RW and a BD-ROM drive respectively), namely F:.

'Drive' F: has a capacity of 100MB and it uses approx. 30MB (70.4MB free of 99.9MB). When I unhide files, I can see the contents of this F: drive (labeled SYSTEM RESTORE) as three folders ($RECYCLE.BIN, Boot, System Volume Information) and a file (bootmgr).

I believe that this is a copy of my system's System Restore onto the external hard drive; I will explain why I believe this below.

Also, when I go to System Properties, the available drives under protection settings are Gateway (C:) (System) with protection On (as always), PQSERVICE with protection Off (as always) but also I notice now that in addition PQSERVICE appears again below the first PQSERVICE (with protection Off). That is, instead of having the protection settings show:

C: On, PQSERVICE Off,

we now have:

C: On, PQSERVICE Off , PQSERVICE Off

i.e. the PQSERVICE is listed a second time.

Trying to figure out what is going on, I went to

Control Panel-->Adminstrative Tools-->Computer Management

and chose Storage-->Disk Management.

Hoping someone can enlighten me, here is the list I get:

(The values are read in sequence and correspond to: Volume, Layout, Type, File System, Status, Capacity, Free Space, % Free. In all cases, Fault Tolerance = No and Overhead = 0% so these are not included. BLANK indicates that there is an empty space in that entry)

The first appears to correspond to a (empty?) Recovery Partition on the internal HD (Disk 0):

BLANK, Simple, Basic, BLANK, Healthy (Recovery Partition), 17GB, 17GB, 100%

The second appears to correspond to a Recovery Partition on the WD external HD, Disk 1, with identical values:

BLANK, Simple, Basic, BLANK, Healthy (Recovery Partition), 17GB, 17GB, 100%

Next comes the WD external drive's details; it is assigned the letter L: and as I mentioned above it is currently being formatted under Windows as a NTFS drive, and about 10% has elapsed so far. So the values are:

L:, Simple, Basic, NTFS, Formatting (10%), 17GB, 17GB, 1380.14GB, 1380.14GB, 100%

Next comes the Gateway system's drive C: details:

C:, Simple, Basic, NTFS, Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition), 1380.17GB, 984.96GB, 71%

Next it mentions SYSTEM RESERVED which shows a partition on the internal drive Disk 0 when I click on it with values:

SYSTEM RESERVED, Simple, Basic, NTFS, Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition), 100MB, 70MB, 70%

and (here is the important bit) the entry below is 'system reserved' drive F: corresponding it seems to a partition on disk 1 (the external drive) with values:

SYSTEM RESERVED (F:), Simple, Basic, NTFS, Healthy (Active, Primary Partition), 100MB, 70MB, 70%.

So did Acronis create a copy of C:'s System Reserve onto the external drive (since it has been assigned a letter, F:, and I can access it like I would a normal drive from My Computer? In other words, My Computer lists three (visible) drives now: C:, F: and L: instead of just C: and L:).

Any ideas on what Acronis did here and why it failed to format the external drive so it could then clone my system on it?

(After I finish reformatting the external drive L: I will of course try again to clone C: on it using Acronis and will report. But I am curious if anyone has any idea on what just happened here as I am no expert on these matters.)

Thank you in advance!

~ Peter