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WindowsTalk August, 2005 By James M. Fisher Original article on WindowsTalk website
Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0
I have to admit that I am not excited by partitioning software the way I am about other applications. I mean, partitioning software is not something I use daily, weekly or even monthly. Yearly, perhaps! In fact, I used to run PowerQuest's PartitionMagic 8.0 from the two DOS floppy disks it creates when I needed to resize a partition or partition and format a drive; I only installed the actual Windows portion of the program once or twice on a PC. However, PartitionMagic is now owned by Symantec, so I went on a quest for a similar product. Being familiar with Acronis True Image 8.0 (reviewed here), I decided to try out their "Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0". Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 is a multi-faceted program that allows one to manage partitions as well as modify (create, delete, resize) them, run diagnostics, and even recover lost or damaged partitions. A multi-boot manager is also included, although installing it is an option. It has far more features than the Disk Management snap-in in Windows 2000/XP/2003, which pretty much limits one to deleting and creating partitions; no resizing is possible. It is not within the scope of this article to review every single aspect of this program, but there are a few areas of interest that I want to touch on so that you get a general feel of how the program operates and simple and quick it is. You can read more here on Acronis' site and download a PDF version of the User Guide as well.
Who needs this type of program?Usually a factory-shipped PC comes with it's hard drive formatted in one large C: partition. With today's hard drives of 80, 120 or even 200 GB, that's a lot of space wasted! Partitioning a drive allows one to save or backup data to another partition where it is segregated from the operating system (OS) which can sometimes become corrupted, either by faulty hardware, user error or a virus or Trojan attack. Smaller partitions can be defragmented faster as well. A program like Acronis Disk Director can easily partition (divide up) an entire disk in a few mouse clicks in a matter of minutes. It certainly has it's place on the hard drives of 'Power Users', and especially those who do a lot of testing of hardware and software on their PCs and are constantly formatting, reformatting and resizing their drives. Experienced users can even 'edit' the parameters of a drive with the powerful Acronis Disk Editor.
SetupSetup is easy. After entering the product key, setup proceeds and the option to install the Acronis OS Selector is offered. This can be installed later, if you wish to boot two Operating Systems at some point. Just before setup concludes, the option to have Acronis Disk Director start in 'Automatic' or 'Manual' is offered. The Automatic mode is all wizard-driven, guiding the new user through each step. The Manual mode is more for experienced users and those who are more comfortable with a more 'hands-on' approach. This is how Automatic Mode appears:
In Automatic mode, the user is limited to performing (by means of the Wizards) only four operations:
Create Partition, Increase Free Space, Copy Partition, and finally Recover Partitions. And this is Manual Mode:
Whichever mode you choose, you can change later from within Acronis Disk Director.
Let's explore some of the features of Acronis Disk Director.
The ProgramThe best way to learn all the intricacies of Acronis Disk Director (aside from the User Guide) is to click around. For instance, clicking on one of the drive icons produces the disk usage graphic on the left side of the window under "Details":
Notice the differences now in Manual mode. Along with the same four choices as in Automatic mode a whole list of choices under 'Operations' and 'Advanced' now appear once a partition is clicked. These are definitely tools for the experienced user! You'll note that more icons appear on the Acronis Disk Director 'Operations' toolbar as well:
One handy feature is the ability to run a 'Check' (CHKDSK) on any disk or partition. It's quite fast and easy with Acronis Disk Director, plus one gets a visual display of the results, which Windows only shows when CHKDSK is run from the command line:
In XP, a handy shortcut to Windows Defrag is available on the right-click menu as well as on the toolbar.
Bootable Media BuilderThe option to create a bootable CD (or DVD) or bootable floppies of the program is offered during the initial installation. If you chose to by-pass this creating the boot media is highly recommended, and assuming your PC is relatively recent and can boot from a CD (you may need to change settings in your BIOS), by all means create the bootable CD or DVD. For some PCs, and especially newer laptops, the floppy drive is no longer included as standard hardware, so you will need the CD.
OS SelectorAt some point you may want to install another operating system such as another version of Windows or Linux.
According to Acronis: "With Acronis OS Selector, you can install an unlimited number of operating systems, install multiple versions of Windows on the same partition, install multiple copies of the same version of Windows on a single disk drive, and boot the system from any partition on any drive, as well as many other features."
Pretty impressive features, and far more elaborate then Windows Boot Manager. If Acronis OS Selector was not installed along with the Acronis Disk Director Suite, there is a link to install it on the Programs menu. Upon installation, all existing Operating Systems are identified and added to the boot menu. Now, when rebooting your PC, the Acronis OS Selector will appear. As well, a brief text message will appear when you boot your PC prompting you to hit ESC to bypass it. You can, at this point make changes to how the Acronis OS Selector performs. For instance, you can choose to have it appear each time you boot, or appear for a set amount of time before booting into the default OS, or not having it appear at all. All these options are available within the Windows portion of the program as well.
Again, space does not allow me to go into all the functions that the Acronis OS Selector contains, but one especially useful ability it has is the "Copy OS" function. This duplicates all system files, folders and installed programs, putting them in a hidden system folder labeled "BOOTWIZ". This is very handy for testing software on the duplicated OS before installing it on the original OS. Copying takes some time and of course free hard drive space equal to what the existing OS occupies is needed for the duplicate OS. Once it is finished, the copied OS appears as a shortcut within Acronis OS Selector as well as a choice on the boot menu. Another nice feature of the Acronis OS Selector is the ability to access the Acronis Disk Director at boot time. This saves looking for the bootable floppies or CD you created (or maybe didn't create!) at installation of the Suite.
ConclusionAcronis Disk Director Suite 9 is an excellent program and a worthy competitor -if not successor- to PartitionMagic. One word kept coming to mind as I used its various features and as I described it to others: "slick". This is one slick program! Everything it does it does well and does it fast. The bootable media is top-notch, the manuals are thorough and overall everything has a very professional 'feel' to it. Along with Acronis True Image 8, a user has all he or she needs to manage his PC.
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incl. Acronis Advantage Premier
