Windows 7 - New drive appeared magically

I have a new PC (HP e9220y) running Windows 7 64-bit. I am testing different backup methods to decide what works best. I tried the Windows back up and restore and had some problems with it. (It didn't seem to recognize that it did one backup already and showed "Last Backup: Never". )

So based on a suggestion in this forum I think, I installed the free edition of Macrium Reflect. It performed the initial first backup just fine. The it did the first scheduled backup this morning as expected, creating a whole new backup file next to the initial one. (The free edition does not do incremental backups so this was expected.)

BUT, all of a sudden I seem to have a new partition on my hard drive that mirrors my C: drive. It's labeled K: (which was the next available letter.) I don't understand why this appeared? Any ideas???

You probably did not define a folder to which Macrium was supposed to write the image. Does the file in the new partition look like this?

It is a virtual drive that Macrium creates when run that it mounts the backup image to, and allows you access to the backup file(s).

I use Reflect as well and the only time I see that drive is when Reflect is running, other than that it isn't there (I have it set to not run all the time, only when creating backups).

Thanks for the responses.

I selected my external hard drive (J: in my case) as the destination for the backups. And that is where they were sent to. I see files that look similar to what whs showed above.

But the other drive (K is listed under Computer along with my C: drive, D: drive and the external drive J:. It does ot have backup files in it, it looks like it contains the exact same folders as my C: drive.

Can I delete it? Was it maybe created temporarily during the back up but Reflect failed to delete it for some reason?

Probably not even if you tried real hard. All that drive is is a virtual hard drive created by Reflect so that you can browse and restore items from the backup, and should only be visible as long as the backup image is mounted in it.

If you don't want to see it all the time go into Services (Start-type services in the Search box) and set the "Macrium Reflect Image Mounting Service" to manual, then it will only run when you mount the backup image.