Acronis 2010 – Partitions to back up dialog

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Can someone help me out. I have purchased Acronis to back up my hard drive, but when I run Acronis it has two drives, see picture. Do I tick both drives or just the C drive which is already ticked. Thanks for any help in advance.

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Just select the one “C” drive for your primary os image backup…that’s the one you want.

The 283 MB smallar area may be a recovery partition area created by your computer manufacturer as “hidden drive”.
Or
Windows 7 creates a partition when 1st clean installed in preparation for bitlocker file encryption et al.
Even if you don’t own the “Ultimate” version of Windows 7, or have any intention on using BitLocker, it still creates this in the event you do an inplace “easy upgrade”…or change your mind later.

Look over your documentation regarding recovery options if your computer is of an OEM type, there may be reference to it.
If you clean installed Windows 7, and have no use for this space you can easily delete it with a 3rd party
partitioning tool. Don’t be in any rush to do so, make certain you know fully what is going on with your setup first.

Some versions of Acronis will create a partitioned area for it’s own purpose, look over your Acronis documentation carefully
as well for references to such.

Go into “Disk Management” and see if it shows up there.

One more thing, you double posted by accident, see if you can go back and delete one of them. Preferably not this one.

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Thanks for your help, much appreciated. I have tried to delete the other thread, but with no luck. Any ideas.

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Did you click on delete in the bottom right hand corner of the posting window?

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I have just now deleted the duplicate thread.

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I would also recommend doing a full backup of the whole drive by checking the box next to “Disk 1” at least one time. That way you have a method of restoring the whole drive (Recovery partition also) should you have a major hard disk failure.

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Can someone help me out. I have purchased Acronis to back up my hard drive, but when I run Acronis it has two drives, see picture. Do I tick both drives or just the C drive which is already ticked. Thanks for any help in advance.

John Hi and welcome

Any idea what is on “D”. It looks like it is a recovery partition, and if it is you dont need to back it up

ken J

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I would highly highly highly recommend backup both them drives. The smaller is like your recovery when you ht F8 repeatedly. A couple hundred mb not going to hurt anything and will make such small difference on a backup
That comes from experience with Acronis

I lost a drive, separate drive when it had no reference to it by not backing up the smaller one. Turned into a nightmare

There are methods where you don’t create the smaller partition and expand it into the full drive but I won’t go into that here.

EDIT: The only thing you don’t need to backup with Acronis is the Secure Zone if you created it(F11 thing). Unless you delete the partition it will still be there when you do a Install

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Thanks for the replys. No Ken I don’t know what the small partition is, it dosn’t show up in computer, only C drive. But when you start Acronis it appears in the backup window. So does that mean I should click Disc 1 and backup everything. I assume that can’t hurt, there is only one drive in the computer. And if I have to restore an image( hope not ) it should restore both partitions to the same as when I made the backup. Does that sound right?
Cheers John.

P.S Sorry for my ignorance on this matter. I’m not good at computers in general, and this Acronis is scarring me. I have tried youtube, but none of the videos explain this extra partition.

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No small partition will not show up in Win. It may be nothing more than what CLiNT said

perhaps I don’t understand it either but I always back up the small also cause of 1 incident. Maybe I was wrong but when it boots to win and all my stuff on 2nd drive is gone and I couldn’t recover by no means I thought it was because I had deleted the small.

I know if you are doing fresh install and when it gets to partition screen you can create partition and it creates a small one in varying size from 100mb up (if you have second actual drive already there it won’t create small one) but if not, you can delete the larger drive and Extend small one out to end, thus you end up with 1 partition

I will attempt again (after backing my stuff up to new usb drive) to restore from Acronis without the small and see what happens.

Don’t be afraid of Acronis, been using for years and it is the best there is hands down. 5 minutes I’m back on and browsing to at least last point I saved. I do not use the automatic stuff but use the (Acronis Startup Recovery manager installed from Tools and Utilities where you press F11 during boot) option and do all the backing up stuff there without Windows background noise.

I’m sure some have had problems but was their stuff flaky to begin with or viruses and whatnot?
I have never had a problem using the F11 backup

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I tried reinstalling without small partition and each time I go back and look I have a 100mb partition there. This could be just what Acronis does because as I previously said I use the Startup Recovery Manager with F11.

BTW it will show up in Win if you right click Computer and choose Manage, next choose Disk management and under storage and you’ll see it there. Mine says System Reserved 100mb

Won’t hurt to back it up either way

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Thanks for all the info. Veegertx can you help with the startup manager, it dosn’t find C drive but it finds D drive to reinstall, and you can’t change the drive letter. I have looked at the Acronis help file, it just has a warning about drives may be different, but otherwise not very helpfull. Hence this is why i’m on this site.

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Thanks for all the info. Veegertx can you help with the startup manager, it dosn’t find C drive but it finds D drive to reinstall, and you can’t change the drive letter. I have looked at the Acronis help file, it just has a warning about drives may be different, but otherwise not very helpfull. Hence this is why i’m on this site.

Thats what it will be, remember C: is the small partition

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Thanks for the reply veegertx. I hope I have got this right, when you test Acronis for a restore by running Acronis when the computer is going, I get to restore C drive as in the photo above. But when you run Acronis from the startup manager by pressing F11, I get a choice of my small system reserved partition labeled C my large partition which I thought would be C actually labled D, and one labled MBR. Does that mean when I restore with the startup manager (God forbid) I will end up with my C drive being called D drive. Or when it is all restored and I go to computer, do I see C drive as I do now. I only see C drive, not the small system reserved or the MBR. Sorry to be a pain, but if it all the drive letters matched up it might make more sense, to me anyway. I can’t thank you enough for all help and effort you have put in to try and help me. If I ever have to use Acronis I hope the computer is still going so I can just open Acronis, That way seems to make sense
Cheers John.

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In the photo above you would just select Disk 1 with all of the partitions checked either from Win or Startup recovery. It will do them all and when it gets back into Windows each drive will be correct, the C: is main drive but the hidden small partition has no drive letter in Disk Manager

I make my master image from F11 so it doesn’t get any background noise. Just a method I like so there are no ? it’s good and for last 3 years has never failed. Except a couple times when I did run it from within Windows, but that may have been XP or Vista
You could setup the Acronis scheduler in Windows to make incremental backups daily, weekly or whatever frequency you desire or need depending on how much stuff gets changed in your situation.
I don’t do that because I save all my Doc’s and stuff onto another drive which I mirror to an external usb HD weekly or sooner if i know a lot has changed.

Its all about developing your backup strategy which fits you and your system. You took the first step purchasing Acronis which for me has been an excellent tool.

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Thank you so much veegertx,I would have been lost without you. I was a little bit confused when startup manager shows different drive letters than what they should be. But if it all sorts itself out when it restores and I end up with only C drive showing in computer, then all is well. Hope I never have to use it, but it gives you some security. Once again thank you for you’re patience, I’m obviously not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to computers!
All the best John

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