Acronis Disk Director Suite 9; How does it stack up?
Written: Nov 21 '04 (Updated Dec 15 '04)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Great partitioning tool; like the OS Selector, and happy to have Recovery Expert
Cons: Don't know why I need the Disk Editor tool
The Bottom Line: The bottom line has used and will continue to use Acronis Disk Director 9.0
|
|
|
| ivplay's Full Review: Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 Full Version for P... |
I have used a partition manager for one reason or another for the past year or so, and when my favorite software program was bought out by Symantec I couldn't help but think of it as the beginning of the end. Symantec has taken great programs and made them good or mediocre programs in the past either through trying to integrate into their existing program suites or by their lackluster customer support. When Acronis sent me a review copy of their newest rendition of Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0, I jumped at the opportunity to run it through the gamut.
What is Acronis Disk Director Suite?
Acronis Disk Director Suite is a suite of programs for managing partitions on your hard drive or drives. The software suite includes Partition Manager, Acronis Recovery Expert, Acronis Disk Editor and Acronis OS Selector. I will discuss the variants below, but first, why would you need a partition management software suite?
In the past there was little need to partition single drives into separate partitions unless you wanted to run more than one OS (Operating System) on your computer. With the advent of larger and larger drives (and less and less stable OS's) this is no longer the case. Many people including myself now partition their drives into three partitions; one for the OS, one for the program files and one for the raw data. By partitioning in this manner you can reduce the risk of hosing your operating system due to frequently accessing the memory, thus resulting in corruption. A second reason for this is defragmentation time. With very large hard drives, a defragmentation process takes a very long time. With separate partitions you will not need to defragment the OS and program partitions nearly as often. Finally, backups of your system will take less time and space. Since the OS and program files should not change much relative to the data file, you can run your preferred backup solution less frequently on those partitions. The data files which are most frequently modified can be backed up more often with less space required each time.
Installation/System Requirements
In my case I downloaded the software from the Acronis website and installed from the .exe file. If you choose to download from the Acronis website, the program will cost you $49.99... The download was 38.7 MB/s and requires a 25 character alpha-numeric code to be keyed in during the install. Other than that, it is the same old straight forward installation process along with a prompt to create bootable media….
One thing to keep in mind before purchasing new software is the system requirements. For Acronis Disk Director Suite 9 the supported Operating Systems include:
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows ME
Windows NT (including Server)
Windows 2000 (including Server and Advanced Server)
Windows XP
Windows 2003 Server
For the system, it is recommended that you have at least a PC-compatible computer with a Pentium CPU or higher and 32MB of RAM. A mouse is recommended. Based on the different OS’s environments that this program can run under, you may need quite a bit more than this just to work the program…
As part of the download you will receive the Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 manual, a 121 page PDF file that can be printed out or read from the computer. The manual is in well written English and will take the user through most of the possible uses for this program.
Interface
Acronis has produced some of the best interfaces for software in my opinion. The interface matches the Windows XP theme very well and you will feel right at home. Across the top of the interface are the customary drop-down menus, and just below that are the typical one-button selections. Along the left side of the screen is a quick start selection and the majority of the window is taken up by the task pane. The user can select manual or automatic mode with manual mode allowing much more flexibility and control to the tasks. The automatic mode is composed of primarily of wizards that will walk the user through the various tasks, and for the majority of users this will be sufficient.
Variants
As I stated earlier, there are several programs tied up in this suite. The program that the majority of folks will intend to purchase is Partition Manager, formerly known as Partition Expert.
Partition Manager
Partition Manager is the reason I wanted this product. Partition Manager is the direct competitor for the previous partition software I had used, and therefore the one I was obviously most interested in. I have used this program many times for many reasons…
Directly after I received this program, I discovered that I needed a new hard drive in my HTPC, or Home Theater Personal Computer. I have been in the process of backing up all of our home movies and videos to the hard drive as well as recording television programs for viewing at a later time. The 200GB drive was approaching full and we still had video projects to transfer.
I popped in the new Seagate hard drive, opened up Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 and created myself two partitions on the drive. One partition is set up as 40GB for storing television programs and for use as temporary storage for TV-ON-DEMAND, the live recording of TV to allow rewinding, fast forward, etc. The second partition (160GB) was set up specifically for storing video files for the long-term.
With Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 you simply walk through the wizard for creation of a new partition. The program will ask if you want a Primary, Active or Logical partition as well as what formatting you would like to use. It was refreshing to see that along with FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, Linux Swap and EXT2 file system support the program also could format partitions with EXT3 and ReiserFS, both Linux file systems. In this case I set the partitions up as FAT32 so that I could watch the programs either through my Windows XP OS or the Fedora Core 2 Linux OS also on my gaming PC.
Once you have walked through the creation wizard, you simply click on the checkered flag to tell the program to execute the actions. At this point the program told me that I needed to reboot the computer, which I did. Prior to booting into Windows, the program created the partitions as requested with no problems whatsoever.
The second task I needed to accomplish was on the Windows XP installation with partitions set up as explained above with one for OS, one for programs and one for Data. My backup solution is to create image files on an external drive connected to the computer by USB 2.0 cable, and the data partition contains many temporary video and audio files that I do not need to backup. I didn’t want them moved to a DVD or CD however, as then I would have to take extra time each time I wanted to play them. The backups were taking longer and longer and requiring much more space, so I decided that the thing to do was to create a second data partition on the disk to move the unnecessary data to. That way I could still back up my critical data as often as I wanted with less space and time required.
Again, I opened the create a partition wizard and walked through it. This time I was not creating a partition from free space on the disk, but rather free space which exists inside of a partition already. No problem, as Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 will shrink the existing partition to the desired size and then create the new partition in the newly freed space. I again had to reboot at which time the partition tool did exactly as it was told and created a second Data partition on my Windows OS installation.
Finally, I have been working with Fedora Core Linux 2 and have it set up in a dual-boot system with the Windows XP installation. When I installed Fedora, it created three partitions by default. However, the main partition was the lion’s share of the disk and contained the majority of my programs, data, and OS. I wanted to shrink this partition and create a Data partition similar to what I have in Windows, so I opened Acronis Disk Director again.
Walking through the create partition wizard again, the program recognized that there were three partitions, two of which were ext3 file format and one of which was Linux swap format. I told the program to shrink the largest partition to 15GB and then create a Data partition in the freed space that was also EXT3 file system. I rebooted, and booted directly into Fedora Core… Whoops, the partition task did not occur!
As Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 is Windows based, it must install the instructions in the booting process of Windows. Therefore when I booted into Fedora Core the program did not initiate and the partitions changes did not occur. I simply closed out the computer and rebooted into Windows, closed out again and opened in Fedora Core. Bingo! The partitions had been modified as requested and I now had my fourth data partition!
The Partition Manager can also move, shrink, copy and delete partitions. I had no need to perform any of these tasks, but did walk through the wizards. They are very self-explanatory and easy to follow. The only thing that was missing was the ability to set your partition wherever you would like on the disk by specifying free-space before and after the partition. Also missing was the change letter tool present with the other program I had used. This program would search for broken shortcuts due to the drive letter changing and fix them. Again, not a big deal, but still it would be nice to have in Acronis’s program.
Acronis OS Selector
Fedora Core comes with the GRUB Boot Loader, which essentially lets you decide which OS to boot into. I had used this to select between the Windows XP and Fedora Core Linux OS. However, along for the ride with the Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 is the program Acronis OS Selector.
Acronis OS Selector pops up prior to booting into either OS and allows you to choose which installation to run. In this case the boot loader is graphical and again the interface resembles a Windows XP window. The user can set a default OS to boot into with or without a timed delay, which is nice. I assume that the OS Selector is based in Linux, as my USB mouse is enabled during the selection process.
I only have two OS’s installed on my PC, but the OS Selector can be utilized for many more than this. If you were a programmer this would be very handy as you could have Windows 95 through XP and several Linux distro’s on your PC and swap back and forth for testing purposes. Once you are booted into Windows, you can open the OS selector and choose another OS to boot into, at which time the computer will reboot. I would like to be able to open separate OS’s in a window instead, but Microsoft has the only program I know of that can do that…
Acronis Recovery Expert
Acronis Recovery Expert is a software tool to recover partitions that have been deleted either through hardware or software problems. I have not had the opportunity to use this, as I have had no ‘accidentally’ deleted partitions on my computer. However, if you were to need to recover a partition, you simply follow the wizard through the find process, during which it searches unallocated space for deleted partitions. If the recovery expert finds a deleted partition, it will add it to the recovery queue from which you can choose to recover the partition. This may come in handy for some folks, although I have not had the opportunity to use it.
Acronis Disk Editor
Acronis Disk Editor is a powerful program that will allow the user to read, modify and delete data directly from the hard disk itself. This can be useful for expunging virus code or modifying the MBR (Master Boot Record) or other file structure. To tell you the truth, I have no idea why I would ever use this myself, and therefore don’t believe that the typical user will have any reason to open this program. While it is powerful and undoubtedly useful to the right person, that person is not me.
Tech Support
I have not had to work with Tech Support for this particular program, but when I first used Acronis Privacy Expert Suite 7.0 I needed to contact them at support@acronis.com. My experiences with the tech support folks were great, as they built a work-around allowing me to use my Plextor PX-708a to create bootable disks. There is also a FAQ and knowledge base online for their products and the extensive manual is very useful.
Overall
I was looking for something to replace my partition manager of choice which had been bought out by Symantec. In Acronis Disk Director 9.0 I found a replacement and then some. There are a few minor tools missing that I would like to have, but overall it does allow the user to create, move, modify and delete partitions at will. The OS Selector has been a nice addition to my dual-boot system, and it is nice to know that if I ever need the power of the Disk Editor or the Recovery Expert it is available. This is a program worthy of the Acronis name, and I don’t hesitate to recommend it for your partitioning needs.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.