Acronis let me burn a Linux-based CD with only a few keystrokes, but made it annoyingly difficult to build a WinPE-based CD. I prefer WinPE-based boot disks because their hardware support matches the hardware support in Windows itself, and I've had bad experiences with Linux-based boot disks that can't see all the hardware on my system. You can choose to create a CD that uses Linux as the underlying operating system or one that uses WinPE, a Microsoft-provided "preboot environment" version of Windows, like the one you see when you run an installer that installs Windows on your hard disk. Instead, you have to use a wizard interface that creates an image file for you. Unlike its rival Paragon, Acronis doesn't provide prebuilt downloadable image files that you can burn to a CD to create a bootable emergency disk. Its potentially-dangerous and advanced features are sensibly hidden behind a link that opens a full version of the program for experts who know how to use it.
In contrast, Paragon Hard Disk Manager offers a less elegant and far less simple interface, but makes prominent use of easy-to-follow wizards for performing basic operations. The help file warns about the dangers of such features, but the dialog boxes that let you perform these operations don't provide any warnings at all. What surprised me about a product with "Home" in its name is that the same list of operations includes potentially dangerous expert-level functions that (for example) let you change the numerical code that identifies the type of partition-options that make it all too easy to render a system unbootable. I enjoyed working with most of these functions, thanks to the straightforward dialogs that let me resize or split a partition by dragging the edge of a rectangle or by entering the exact amount of disk space I wanted to use. A column on the left lists operations that you can perform on a partition, such as Resize, Move, Copy, Merge, Split, and a dozen others, including a defragmenter. But Acronis Disk Director 11 Home ($49.99, direct) loses points for making it too easy to access potentially dangerous abilities without warning you up front that you might render your disk unbootable.Īcronis Disk Director 11 Home sports a simple, elegant interface that makes it almost blissfully easy to perform most tasks. I gave both products a hard workout, and both did well.
You can't go wrong with either product, but they work in different ways and provide a different set of features.
The biggest rivals in Windows-based disk utilities are Paragon and Acronis, and they each come out with new and more powerful partitioning and disk-management software once every year or so. Best Hosted Endpoint Protection and Security Software.
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