Protected space... is it real?

[Froggie]

Greetings all! My system's Disk 0 (first HDD) looks as follows...

C: 55gB
<unallocated space>: 77.86gB
D: 100.02gB

I have asked RbRx to protect my c: partition. Although during the setup it appeared to be doing as I asked, when finished, it says in its client window that it's protecting 132.86gB.

I'm hoping that RbRx really just flunked MATH in 3rd grade and is just calculating things wrong (whole disk size minus the "other" partitions) when offering me this info in its home window. If it did, it needs to be corrected.

If this is not the case and RbRx is really protecting that <unallocated> space, things will surely go awry when I decide to use that <unallocated> space in extending the D:\ partition or even creating a new partition.

Does anyone know what the real story is here...??

[HDS-Jacob]

Hi Froggie,

For reference, support can be reached at http://support.horizondatasys.com and let's see if we can get an answer here.

Best,
Jacob

[Jimmy]

hi froggie,

maybe i can help you
55 Gb + the unpartioned space of 77,86 Gb is exactly 132,86 Gb, so i guess that RX protects your C: partition and also your unpartitioned space
it does the same with me in my virtual machine
i have a c: partition of 20Gb with 300 Gb of unpartitioned space. RX says that there are 320 Gb protected !
does that makes sense ?
Jimmy

[carfal]

Froggie, you must uninstall Rollback before manipulating partitions, then reinstall. Leaving Rollback installed will surely cause you grief and at worst data loss.

Yes, Rollback is protecting the entire HD, even the unpartioned section. My guess is Rollback by default assumes the unpartitioned section to be part of the "C: partition" since it's on the same drive.

[nexstar]

Maybe RB protects unallocated space on the same drive to allow you to change the partition size. However, carfal is right, it is best to uninstall RB before making any changes to the disk structure, it's just not worth the risk

Graham

[Jimmy]

hi nexstar,

what do you mean exactly ?
change partition size C: or create new partition in the unallocated space while RX is installed ?
could one of the two work without messing up RX ?
Jimmy

[nexstar]

Well, I wouldn't risk it, personally! Even if it worked, I wouldn't be confident that there might not be problems as a result. I was just speculating as to why it might be included in the protected space but one of the support people here might know for sure.

Graham

[carfal]

Let me try to explain it the way i understand that Rollback works.

When Rollback installs it creates a hidden sector map of the current known Drive 0 configuration at time of install. If you choose the default option on install, this will include all known partitions (empty or otherwise as we've discovered in this thread) on Drive 0. The sector map presumably is large enough to include all known sectors of the current configuration of each partition.

Now if you change any of the sizes of current partitions or create new partitions then Rollback cant account for the new sectors (or changed ownership of sectors). This mapping is done on initial install. So for this reason it would probably be disastrous to create, delete or increase/decrease the sizes of partitions while Rollback is installed.

I dont know if any of this makes sense to you or how accurate this is but i believe it's pretty close.

Perhaps somebody from Horizon can explain it better and more accurately.

[nexstar]

I guess that RB will use any sectors on the drive which are available to it which, in the Froggie's case, includes unallocated sectors. The only way to stop RB from using that area would be to partition it and then explicitly exclude it when RB is installed as there is no option to exclude unpartitioned space. But as you would need to uninstall RB anyway to change the partition structure then this becomes a bit of a circular argument

I think you just need to view the RB installation as a way of telling it which parts to 'exclude' rather than which to 'include'. With no way of being able to specify unallocated space then you are only going to be able to exclude actual partitions and as that unallocated space is useful to RB then there doesn't seem much point in excluding it.

Graham

[Jimmy]

thank you carfal,

it's clear now.
so the right way to handle is: uninstall RX from within windows offcourse, make or change partitions, reinstall RX and exclude all other partitions except C:
en then you should have no trouble ? Right ?