Windows 7 System Protection shows unfamiliar available drive

lloydb

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In System Protection for the PC I'm working on (W7ProSP1) there's an unfamiliar item among the available drives. It has an icon resembling a folder (on its side); it's labelled SYSTEM and its protection is off. The other drives are what I'd expect: Windows (C:) (System) and HP_RECOVERY (D:); of those, only the C drive has its protection enabled. Are these entries expected (particularly the SYSTEM one)? If so, are their protection settings reasonable? Restore points can be created successfully. I'm trying to find out why Acronis fails with a Shadow Copy error (incorrect parameter) when trying to back up to the cloud. The error seems to occur in Acronis's pre-backup phase. Any help appreciated - Lloyd.
 

Solution
Hi,
it could be that little system partition contains information that doesn't need backing up. It will contain files obviously relating to something but to be honest it doesn't look like anything is amiss.
Regarding your query about Acronis, can you check the event logs and see if anything is mentioned there?
Hi,
my sys protection looks like this:
An image from 'System Protection shows unfamiliar available drive'. A Windows 10 system properties window shows system protection settings for drives.


Your should look kinda similar even though we are using slightly different versions of Windows. Is there any chance you post a screenshot?
 

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Hi, many thanks for responding. The machine with the problem shows the screenshot below. It's the SYSTEM entry that puzzles me: not only why its protection is off but why it exists at all. I've not seen it on other PCs, and Windows clearly knows C: is its System drive.

An image from 'System Protection shows unfamiliar available drive'. System Properties window showing System Protection settings for various drives.
 

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Hi,
I haven't seen that before either... Has there ever been an upgrade performed on the machine like from vista to win 7 or something or has it ever dual booted operating systems?
Also when you open Disk management, how does it look? My screenshot will show how to find it:
An image from 'System Protection shows unfamiliar available drive'. Windows Disk Management shows two online disks with partitions, one having unallocated space.
 

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Disk Management snapshot below. Unfamiliar to me but I can see the sense in it. That said, why would the SYSTEM partition have System Protection turned off?

An image from 'System Protection shows unfamiliar available drive'. Windows Disk Management shows a 465.76 GB disk with system, OS, recovery, and tools partitions.
 

Last edited by a moderator:
Hi,
it could be that little system partition contains information that doesn't need backing up. It will contain files obviously relating to something but to be honest it doesn't look like anything is amiss.
Regarding your query about Acronis, can you check the event logs and see if anything is mentioned there?
 

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