Product Description

Avoid putting off the task of repartitioning your hard disk drive because of the time consuming task of reinstalling operating systems, applications and the recovery of data. Now with Disk Director Suite you can easily separate system data from personal documents and increases PC performance and data safety! Easily recover any inadvertently deleted partitions or edit hard disk drives!

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1283 in Software
• Brand: Acronis
• Model: PCO46350MB
• Released on: 2006-01-17
• Platforms: Windows NT, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows XP
• Format: CD-ROM
• Dimensions: .15 pounds

Features

• Comprehensive workstation partition and disk-management suite
• Includes Partition Manager, Boot Manager, Partition Recovery, and Disk Editor
• Reorganize PC for better performance and data protection
• New split, merge, and explore partitions; auto operating system detection
• Boot from CD/DVD or from an additional hard-disk drive; view logs

From the Manufacturer
Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 is a comprehensive workstation partition and disk-management suite that combines a number of previous Acronis products into one solution:

• Acronis Partition Manager allows you to resize, move, copy, split, and merge partitions without losing your data
• Acronis Boot Manager is a multi-boot software utility that allows you to install multiple operating systems on your PC
• Acronis Partition Recovery allows you to recover accidentally lost or deleted partitions
• Acronis Disk Editor is a disk-drive repair tool that allows you to perform advanced operations on your hard-disk drive, such as restoration of boot records and hexadecimal editing

Acronis Disk Director Suite is the ideal tool in combination with Acronis True Image backup. Here's how you can take advantage of these two products together:

• Create individual partitions for your system and your data using Acronis Disk Director Suite.
• Image your system partition using Acronis True Image only before applying system changes, such as installing new software and the like.
• And make scheduled data backups from your data partition by selecting specific files you need to backup.
• Thus, using the combination of two great Acronis products you will always have an image of your system and backup of your data. This will greatly save you time and reduce your storage requirements.

Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 adds new key features making it easier than ever before to modify your partition structure and boot new operating systems.

• New! Split partitions--split one partition into two and leave your data intact
• New! Merge partitions--merge two partitions into one and leave your data untouched, even if file systems on the partitions are different
• New! Explore partitions--Windows-like explorer interface to view partition data before performing partitioning operations
• New! Boot from an additional hard disk drive--select the hard-disk drive you want to boot from
• New! Boot from CD/DVD--insert a bootable CD/DVD, and it will automatically be detected and displayed as a boot option by Acronis OS Selector
• New! Automatic operating system detection--detect operating systems that became unbootable due to some accidental reasons with the Acronis OS Selector detection tool

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Customer Reviews

Horrifically dangerous software
This is probably the worst software I've used in years--probably in the last decade. If you are using old operating systems or old hardware, you may be fine, but with XP64 or Vista on the latest hardware, it repeatedly corrupted my hard drive partions rendering them not only unbootable but generally unrecoverable. Another bug is that my wireless mouse would only work during the first welcome/splash screen of the boot CD but not the actual utility once it loaded. I had to hook up a PS/2 mouse. Even that didn't work all of the time (like when I had a 2nd drive plugged in).

Aside from the hardware problems, it plain destroyed partitions and corrupts MBRs. I'll give you some examples. Resize NTFS cluster sizes renders Windows completely unbootable and corrupted. Changing drive letters renders the system unbootable. Setting a partition active corrupts the drive. Performing operations on an external USB drive completely corrupted the drive, and I couldn't fix with any other DOS/Windows utilities that I had. I had to fix it on my Mac! Note that you cannot clone a drive or partition. You can only copy a partition which assigns the wrong drive letter and as noted above you cannot correct without losing all the data. Many operations require multiple reboots for each step involved and some steps fail/crash. Sometimes, it would set the wrong partition active. Finally, copying partitions from one drive to another failed inexplicably and crashed about 1/2 the time. The only operations I was consistently successful at were trivial operations like partition resizes which Vista does natively anyway. Operations that I could do in their "demo" (it is NOT a trial) are fake. They could not be performed using the real software which was the latest version. Please note that my system is otherwise stable and all the native Vista disk utilities/operations work flawlessly. I have used disk utilities like Partition Magic, Norton Ghost, Drive Image, etc., for decades so I am not a newbie.

The final reason for 1 star (zero if I could ), I purchased this direct from Acronis via Digital River. Their support is horrible (basically auto-replies) if they ever respond. Despite having a 30-day money back guarantee, you will never see your money again. This product sets new lows in the already shaky computer hardware/software industry.

Useless - 0 Star if it exists
Not worth a penny. Terrible product, full of bugs. Tried using the Disk Partition utility on two separate machines, got all sorts if imaginary errors, none of which is true!!! Here is a case although not the only one:
>> Error:
>> E000101F4: Acronis Disk Director Suite has detected unsupported hard
>> disk Drives. Acronis Disk Director Suite does not support Windows
>> Dynamic Disks, EZ-Drives, etc.

Reply from Acronis support follows:

First of all we recommend you to download and install the latest build (2160) of Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 available at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/my/updates/ and test it.
>
> Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 supports RAID arrays. You can perform all available operations with partitions located on RAID volumes without any special precautions. Please note that Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 does not support Windows LDM (dynamic disks).
>
> Download the latest SnapAPI archive file from http://download.acronis.com/support/SnapAPI_l_s_e.zip
> Unpack the archive and install the unpacked MSI package and check if that fixes the problem.
>
> If the issue remains we need some additional information.
>
> 1) Could you please download Acronis Report utility available at http://download.acronis.com/support/AcronisReport.exe and run it, create a report and send it to us? Please compress the Acronis Report output file into an archive (e.g. with WinZip) and attach to your message by browsing for the archive. This would provide us with detailed information on the hard disk partition structure.

My hard disk is as simple as it gets, a brand new HP/Media Center and another one running plain XP.
None of their suggestions worked and ultimately I gave up on it as I had to restore after each try.

What a piece of Garbage - Beta Versions are Better !
I have been selling computer and network systems since 1977 (Apple II's) to start. Rarely have I seen such a POS released to market before it was completely designed and tested. I have been back and forth with Acronis no less than 12 times on different bugs. While I am a thorough tester, this software works acceptably only if all you need is to resize and move partitions - DO NOT INSTALL - run only from the CD. Again, don't install it or use it on a new, out of the box Dell either! It has major incompatibilities with certain Dell Factory installed hardware, card reader, Bluetooth, etc. when running Vista - Installed it and BSOD immediately upon reboot! Acronis finally admitted a problem with their SnapAPI drivers and supplied a patch that can't be found anywhere on their website or in their FAQs. Nice, but that, in turn, killed the OS Bootloader used for multiple OS selection - nothing can be recognized after the patch. Bottom line: Acronis is trying to milk the customer with this product by releasing it before it is beyond anything other than a Beta 1.0 version. Additionally, the CD in the box was outdated (Build 2077) and the current build is 2160 - 2 months lag! That should tell you a bit about the continued design of this "Beta" within Acronis. Do they tell you any of this in their FAQ... not a word, you have to submit a support ticket and if you are lucky, 4 or 5 days later they tell you your version is not registered - WHEN OURS WAS FROM THE MINUTE WE PURCHASED IT. Save your self grief, OS crashes, Data Loss, Frustration etc. and purchase something else or wait until Aconis acts like a reputable real manufacture and releases products AFTER they are thoroughly tested and ready for market, rater than trying to "milk" profits from the unsuspecting purchasers - most of whom won't have the detailed technical knowledge to target the problem as Acronis' and then allow Acronis to tell them "it's their hardware" - IT ISN'T - It's Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 Ver Beta.POS ! - Questions? email me at pos-at-ladishes-dot-com. I'd be happy to provide you with the thread and reams of correspondence I've had with Acronis. What a joke and a waste of time. I wonder how many of their other products are designed under this same philosophy of release for sale at Beta 1?