Acronis Disk Director 11 Home manual

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Table of contents for the manual

  • Page 1

    A c r o n i s ® D i s k D i r e c t o r ® 1 1 H o m e User's Guide[...]

  • Page 2

    Copyright © Acr onis, Inc., 2000 -2010. All righ ts reserv ed. "Acronis", "Acr onis Compute with C onfidence", "Acr onis Rec overy Manager ", "Acronis Secur e Zone", Acronis Try&Decid e, and the Acr onis logo are tradema rks of Acronis, Inc. Linux is a registered trad emark of Linus Tor valds. VMware and[...]

  • Page 3

    Table of contents 1 Introducing Acro nis® Disk Dire ctor® 11 Home ......................................................................... 5 2 Installation an d upgrade ................................................................................................ ........ 7 2.1 Hardware requirem ents ...........................................[...]

  • Page 4

    5 Volume opera tions .............................................................................................................. 25 5.1 Creating a volume .................................................................................................................... 25 5.2 Resizing a volu m e .................................................[...]

  • Page 5

    7 Tools ................................................................................................................................... 49 7.1 Acronis Bootable Media Bu il der .............................................................................................. 49 7. 1. 1 Ho w to cre ate b oot abl e m edi a ............................[...]

  • Page 6

    6 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 1 I nt rod uci n g A cr on is® D is k D ir ect or ® 11 Ho me Acronis® Disk Direct o r® 1 1 is a powerful an d easy - to -use tool for managing disks and volumes. With a comprehensive s et of operations, you can organiz e your hard disk and volume configuration for optimal perfor m ance, whil e keeping y[...]

  • Page 7

    7 Copyright © Acronis, Inc. , 2000- 2010  Delete volumes  New! Change file sy ste m s  New! Clean up disk s  New! Hide/unhide v olume s  New! Specify i-node density  New! Change a clu ste r size  Explore volume data , even on Linux volumes before perfor ming operations  Preview changes m ade in d isk and volume layout bef o[...]

  • Page 8

    8 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 2 I nst al la tio n an d upg r ade This section answers questions that might arise befo re the product installation and gu ides you through the installa tion and upgrade of Acronis Disk Director. I n t his s ec tio n Hardware requirem ents ....................................................................[...]

  • Page 9

    9 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 2. 3 Sup po rt ed fil e sys te ms Acronis Disk Dire ctor supports the following file systems for perf o rming operations:  FAT16  FAT32  NTFS  Ext2  Ext3  Reiser3  Linux SWAP The operations re sulting in a change of volu m e size — th at is: Create (p. 25 ), Resize (p. 27 ), Copy (p. [...]

  • Page 10

    10 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 During the install atio n of A cro nis OS Selec to r, the hidden system folder BOOT WIZ will be created on your machine t o keep th e program loader. Acronis O S Selector will also copy operating syste m files found on your machi ne into this folder to avoid pr oblems during the booting pr ocess and to sim[...]

  • Page 11

    11 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Upgrading from the de mo version of Acronis Disk Dir ector 11 If you already hav e the de m o version (p. 9) of Acr onis Disk Director 11 installed and want to upgrade it to a full version: 1. Run Acronis Disk Dir ector. 2. Select Help > Enter license key from the top menu, and then type in your license[...]

  • Page 12

    12 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 3 B asi c con ce pt s This section gives you a clear understanding of basic and dynam ic disks and volu me types. After reading thi s section, you will know the advant ages and limitations of each p ossible volume configuration. In ad dition, you will be able to de cide what types of disks and vol umes bes[...]

  • Page 13

    13 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 By using Acronis Disk Director, you can convert a dyna mic disk to a basic disk (p. 45 ). Yo u ma y need to do so, for exa m ple, to install an operating system other than Windo ws on that disk. Converting a dynamic disk to basic may require del eting some volumes on it, such as volumes that occupy more th[...]

  • Page 14

    14 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000- 2010 Striped volume A volume that resid es on two or more dyna mic disks and whose data is evenly distributed acr o ss equally-sized portions of disk space (called stripes ) on those disks. Access to data on strip ed volumes is usually faster than o n other type s o f dyna m ic v o lumes, be cause it can be perf[...]

  • Page 15

    15 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 System volume This is the volu m e from wh ich any of the installed Win do ws operating sys tems starts — even if more than one is installed. The system v olume contain s files t hat are necessary to start Wind ows, such as boot.ini and Ntldr. There is always one system volume, whereas each of t he insta[...]

  • Page 16

    16 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000- 2010 What is the cause of mi salignment All Windows operating systems earlier than Vist a use a factor of 512 bytes to cre ate volume clusters. The volume start i s aligned to 512-byte sectors. Als o, these operating syst ems use the Cylinder/Head/Se ctor (CHS) addressing schem e. Vo lumes created with this sche[...]

  • Page 17

    17 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 After the volu m es are cr eated, you can perform oth er operations with them (incl uding changing their size) under any disk la yo ut. How to fix volume mis alignment using Acroni s Disk Director Suppose that you hav e alre ady created basic volu m es on a disk with a 4-KB s ector size, using Windows XP. [...]

  • Page 18

    18 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 4 G ett in g st art ed After reading thi s section, you will know how to run an d use Acronis Disk Director , what precautions you should take, and h ow to perform the mos t comm o n tasks you m ight n eed. I n t his s ec tio n Precautions ................................ ..................................[...]

  • Page 19

    19 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 2. In the disk manage ment area, examine the curren t layout of disks and volu mes. 3. Add one or more m anage m ent oper ations on disks a nd vo lu m es to the queue o f pending operations. These o peratio ns w ill take effect only after you commit them. 4. In the disk manage ment area, examine how th e l[...]

  • Page 20

    20 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 1. Menu The menu provides access to all the actions, t ools and settings o f Acronis Disk Director. 2. Toolbar The toolbar displays the current disk layout (p. 19 ) and lets you perform the f o llo wing actions on pending operati o ns: Comm it (p. 20 ), Undo and Redo (p. 21 ). Disk Management vi ew The dis[...]

  • Page 21

    21 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 I/O errors are f ound on a dynamic disk. If a disk has errors, we rec o mmended y ou to repair it as soon as possible to avoid data lo ss.  Offline A dynamic disk is accessibl e in read only m ode (if you switched i t to offline previously), or not accessible at all ( corrupted or intermittently unavail[...]

  • Page 22

    22 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To find out more inf ormation about disk statuse s, please refer t o the Volume sta tus descriptions article on the Mi cro soft w ebsite. Important! For inst ructions explaining h ow to repair volumes with erroneou s statuses, please refer to the Troubleshooting Disk Man agement article o n the Microsoft w[...]

  • Page 23

    23 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 view at the top, a s well as in the graphical view at the bottom. Any volume chan ges, includin g changing the volum e letter or label, are als o immediat ely displayed. While an operati on is pending it can be easily undone and redone — see Undoing pending operations (p. 21 ). 4 . 7 . 1 P e n d i n g o [...]

  • Page 24

    24 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 can examine inf o rmati o n about disk and volume operations, including rea sons any for failures. Physically, a log is a collection of XML files s to red on the machine. Operations perfor med using bootable media are l ogged as well, but the log’ s lifetime is limited to a current session. Rebo o ting e[...]

  • Page 25

    25 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Save all the filtered log entries to a file 1. Set filters (p. 22 ) to get a list of the log ent ries that satisfy the filtering criteria. 2. Click Save All to File . 3. In the o pened window, specify a path and a name for the file. As a re sult, the log entries of that list wil l be saved. Delete all the [...]

  • Page 26

    26 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 4. 10 H ow to How to create a volume that spans across s everal disks? Create a dynamic volume (spanned or striped) b y usin g the Create volum e (p. 25 ) wizard. How to increase a v olu me size at the expense of oth er v olumes' u nallocated space? Resize (p. 27 ) the volume. How to merge two volumes[...]

  • Page 27

    27 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Use the Clean up dis k (p. 48 ) operati on.[...]

  • Page 28

    28 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 5 Vo lu me o pe rat io ns This section describes all the operations that y o u can p erfo rm with vo lu mes in Acronis Di sk Director. Acronis Disk Direct or must obtain exclusive access to the target disk/volum e. T his me ans no other disk management utili ties (such as the Windows Disk Manage ment utili[...]

  • Page 29

    29 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 2. Specify the type tha t the new volume will ha ve. Every volume type is pr ovided with a brief description to let you better un derstand the advantag es and limitations of each p o ssible v olume type. To learn mor e about vo lume types — see Types o f basic volumes (p. 11 ) and Types of dynamic volume[...]

  • Page 30

    30 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010  Logical . Set the v o lume as Logical , if it is intended for data storage. 6. Click Finish to add the pending volume creati on operation. The results of the pending operation ar e immediately disp laye d as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pendin g operation you will have t o commit[...]

  • Page 31

    31 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 As a result you will get addi tional unallocated space, wh ich will be adjacent to the volume that you are resizin g. By default, this opti on does not apply to the boot vo lu m es on the disk. To include these volumes, select the Use fre e s pace on bo ot volumes check box. 4. Examine how the resiz ed vol[...]

  • Page 32

    32 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 The results of the pending operation ar e immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pendin g operation you will have t o commit it (p. 20 ). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effec tively cancel them. 5. 4 Mo vin g a v ol ume This o perati[...]

  • Page 33

    33 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To perform the pendin g operation you will have t o commit it (p. 20 ). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectiv ely can cel them. Moving system, boot, and active volumes Important: Do n ot move any of these vo lumes unless you absolutely ne ed to. If you want to transfer[...]

  • Page 34

    34 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 the opposite action (merging a non -secured volume t o a secured one), the main volum e security settings will be assigned to the resultant volume. 5. 6 For ma tti ng a vo lum e The formatting operation prepares a volum e to stor e files and folders, b y creating a file syst em o n it. Caution: Formatting [...]

  • Page 35

    35 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 NTFS file system. For exa mple, these programs ma y incorrectly calculate the total and available space on such volumes. 5. 7 Del et ing a vo lu me This operation delet es a sel ected volume. The space th at was occupied by the v o lume be comes unallocated space o n the c o rrespondin g disk or disks. Cau[...]

  • Page 36

    36 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 The results of the pending operation ar e immediately disp laye d as if the operatio n had been performed. To perform the pendin g operation you will have t o commit it (p. 20 ). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effec tively cancel them. 5. 9 Cha ng ing a vo lu me la bel T[...]

  • Page 37

    37 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 5. 10 C ha ng ing a dr iv e let te r Windows operating systems assign drive letters, such as C, to volumes to locate f iles and folders on them. You can set up, modify , or remove the drive le tter of a volume that is sup ported by Windows; namely, a volum e whose file system is FAT16, FAT 32, or NTFS. The[...]

  • Page 38

    38 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To perform the pendin g operation you will have to co mmit it (p. 20 ). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effec tively cancel them. 5. 12 C o nve rti ng a log i cal vo lu me to pr im ary This operation app lies to b asic disks whose partitioning st yle is M BR. It converts [...]

  • Page 39

    39 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 5. 14 Se tt in g a vo lu me ac ti ve This operation appli es to pr im ary volum es on basic MBR disks. To specify the v o lume fr o m which the machine will start, you need t o set a v o lume t o become acti ve. A disk can have only o ne ac tive volume, so if you set a v olume as ac tive, the volume, which[...]

  • Page 40

    40 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 5. 16 R em ov ing a mi rro r Mirrored volu m es provide fault tolerance by storing two exact copies of data — called mirr o rs — on two different disks. Removing a mirror from a mirrored volu me means co nverting that volu me to a simple volume, thus losing fault toler ance. The space that was o ccupie[...]

  • Page 41

    41 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 2. For one of the t wo mirrors, specif y the v o lume label and/or drive letter that the mirror will have when it is converted to a volume. To not assign a dri ve letter to the volume, click Do not assign the letter . The other mirr or will be ass igned the drive letter and v olume label of the origin al m[...]

  • Page 42

    42 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Note: If the volum e is in use, the tool can o nly check it for errors, but cannot repair them. The checking and fixing of errors on this volum e will be pe rformed the next time yo u restart the system. 5. 20 De fr ag men ti ng a vo lu me This operation is enabled in Windows operating systems, and is disa[...]

  • Page 43

    43 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 5. 22 C ha ng ing a fi le sy st em This operation lets you change the volume file syst ems o f the f o llowing t y pe:  FAT16 to FAT32 and bac k  Ext2 to Ext3 and back The table bel ow describes main differ ences between the file syst ems. Fe at ure FA T1 6 F AT3 2 Ex t2 Ex t3 Maximum volume size 2 G[...]

  • Page 44

    44 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To perform the pendin g operation you will have to co mmit it (p. 20 ). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effec tively cancel them. 5. 24 U nhi di ng a vol um e This operation app lies to hi dden vo lu m es on basi c MBR disks. Unhiding a hid den a volume means changing the[...]

  • Page 45

    45 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 more i- no des there are in th e file syst em , the less likel y you will not run of i-nodes. But, the “file system chec k” o perati on will be performed slow er. 3. Click OK to add the pendin g i-node density changing operation. The results of the pending operation ar e immediately displayed as if t h[...]

  • Page 46

    46 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 6 D isk o pe ra tio ns Th is section d esc ribes all th e operations that you can p erform with disks using Acr onis D isk Director. Acronis Disk Dire ctor must obtain exclusive ac cess to the target disk/volume. This means no o ther disk management utili ties (such as the Windows Disk Management u tility)[...]

  • Page 47

    47 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 6. 2 Ba sic d is k clo ni ng This operation is a vailable for basic MBR disks. The cloning opera tio n tran sfers all the source disk data to a target disk. The source disk volum es can be cloned to the targ et disk “as is”, or resiz ed automatically with r espect to the t arget disk size. You may want[...]

  • Page 48

    48 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To perform the pendin g operation you will have t o commit it (p. 20 ). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. Using advanced options When cloning a disk containing the system volu me, you need to retain o perating sy stem bo o tability on the target dis[...]

  • Page 49

    49 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To c onv er t a b asi c M BR dis k to ba s ic GP T 1. Right-click the basic MBR disk you want to c o nvert to GPT, and then click Convert to GP T . An information wind ow will pop up, stating that y o u are about to convert MBR to GPT. 2. Click OK to add the pendin g MBR to GPT disk con v ersion operati on[...]

  • Page 50

    50 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To perform the pendin g operation you will have t o commit it (p. 20 ). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 6. 5 Di sk con ve rsi on: b as i c t o dyn ami c You would want to co nvert a basic di sk to dynamic in th e following ca ses:  If you plan [...]

  • Page 51

    51 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To c onv er t a d yn amic d is k to ba si c 1. Right-click the dyna mic disk you need to conv ert, and then click Convert to ba sic . You will re ceive a final warning abou t the dynamic disk being con verted to basic. You will be advised ab out the changes that will happen to the s ystem if the chosen di [...]

  • Page 52

    52 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 When taking a dyna mic disk whose volumes span ac ross several disks offline, the se volumes get statuses with respec t to their type: Simple/Spanned/S triped volumes become Failed ; Mirro red volumes beco m e Failed Re dundancy . The disk you took o ffline also becomes Missing . To recover Simple/Spanned [...]

  • Page 53

    53 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 For more informa tion on volume statuses pl ease refer to the following Microsoft article: http://technet. m icrosoft.c om/en -us/librar y/cc771775.aspx 2. Click OK to add the pendin g foreign disks importing operation. The results of the pending operation ar e immediately disp laye d as if the operation h[...]

  • Page 54

    54 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To perform the pendin g operation you will have t o commit it (p. 20 ). Exiting the program without committing the pen ding op eratio ns will effectively cancel the m . Note: If you a ccidentally cleared an MBR disk with impo rtant data, it is still possible to recover the volumes on this disk by using Acr[...]

  • Page 55

    55 Copyright © Acronis, Inc. , 2000- 2010 7 To ol s This section describes Acronis Bootable Media Build er and Acronis Recovery Expe rt tools. After reading thi s section, you will have learned h ow to create bootable medi a in order to use Acronis Disk Dire ctor on bare metal or outsid e of an operating syste m , and h o w to re cover deleted o r[...]

  • Page 56

    56 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 WinPE proved to be the most convenient bootable solution in large environment s w ith heterogeneous hard ware. Advantages:  Using Acronis Disk D irect o r in Wind ows Preinstallation Envir onment provides m o re functi onali ty than using Linux-based b ootable media. Having bo o ted PC-compatible hard w[...]

  • Page 57

    57 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 http://www.micr o soft.c o m/downloads /details.aspx?FamilyID=94bb6 e34 -d890-4932-8 1 a5- 5b50c657de0 8&DisplayLan g=en Automated Installa tion Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 (PE 3. 0): ht tp://www.micros o ft.com/download s/details.aspx?familyid=69 6DD665 -9F76-4 177-A811- 39C26D3B3B34 &displaylang=en 2[...]

  • Page 58

    58 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Parameters When specifying multiple parameters, separate th em with spaces. acpi=off Disables Advanced Co nfigu ration and Power Interface (ACPI). You may want to use this parameter when e xperiencing problems with a particu lar hardware configuration. noapic Disables Advanced P rogra mmable Interrupt Cont[...]

  • Page 59

    59 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Disables the m odule whose name is g iven by module_ name . For example, to disa ble the use of the SATA module, spe cify: sata_sis=off pci=bios Forces the use o f PCI BIOS i nstead of accessing the har dware device directly. You may want t o use this parameter if the machine has a non-standard P CI host b[...]

  • Page 60

    60 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010  Specify the path to the fold er where the WinPE fil es are lo cate d. 4. [optional] Specify Win dows drivers to be added t o Win dows PE. Once you boot a machine into Windows PE, the drivers can help you access the device wher e the backup archive is located. Click Add and specify the path to the neces[...]

  • Page 61

    61 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 If you do not wish t o follow this procedure every time y ou boot fr o m m edia on a g ive n hardwar e configuration, re-cr eate the bootable media wi th the appropriate mode nu mb er (in our exa mple, vga=0x318 ) typed in t he Kerne l parameter s window — see L inux-based b ootable media (p. 51 ) for de[...]

  • Page 62

    62 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 The Recovery Expert first attempts to recover v olumes "as is ", i.e. logical volumes will be recovered as logical and primar y as primary respectively. If t he pr im ary volum e cann o t be re covered as is, it will be recovered as logi cal. Also, if the logical vo lume cannot be recovered as is[...]

  • Page 63

    63 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 volume list. Th e search will , however, continue until al l the remaining disks are scanned. If no volumes are found , you will be asked to cl o se the Rec overy Expert. The program can even find an d display intersected volumes, t hat is, v o lumes that were created and deleted on th e disk at different [...]

  • Page 64

    64 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 8 A cr oni s OS Se lec to r Acronis OS Selector is a po werful, reliable and easy- to -use boot manager t hat allows several operating system s on a sing le machine and lets you c reate different configurati ons for any installed operating system , including Wind o ws 7. With Acr onis OS Selector, you can [...]

  • Page 65

    65 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Operations This section include s act ion s available for selected ope rating systems or their shortcuts — see Using shortcuts (p. 64 ).  Boot – boots the sel ected operating system or its configuration (shortcut)  Se t Default – sets the defa ult operating system  Set password – pro tects[...]

  • Page 66

    66 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 8. 1. 3.1 Bo ot in g o pe ra ti ng sy st ems You can boot any o peratin g system with Acronis OS S elector:  From the boot menu (if activated)  From under Wind o ws from the Acronis OS Selector main window Booting an OS using the boot menu Having turned on the machine, wait fo r the A cronis OS Selec[...]

  • Page 67

    67 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010  Click Set Passwo rd in the Op erations section of the main wind o w sidebar  Enter and confir m a passw o rd in the Se t Operating Sy stem Password dialog and click OK . An operating system p assword must be at lea st six characters long. You can also set an operat ing sy stem passw ord by clicking [...]

  • Page 68

    68 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Changing the d isk order for an operation system a lready installed may prevent th at system from loading. Fo ld er s Acronis OS Selector automatically determines sys tem folders for all Windo ws operating sy s tems. System folders con tain files required for an operating system to work properl y . Wind o [...]

  • Page 69

    69 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 8 . 1 . 4 E d i t i n g o pe r a t i n g s y s t e m s This section provid es the means of operating system and shortcut management. 8. 1. 4.1 Hi di ng op er at in g sys te ms If needed, you can hid e any operating system install ed so it will not be sh o wn in the bo ot menu and Operating systems section [...]

  • Page 70

    70 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 8. 1. 4.5 C opy in g ope ra ti ng sy st em s Acronis OS Selector allows you to duplicate any install ed operating system or it s shortcut. It might be useful if you want t o test un kno wn software before installing it on the m ain OS. Copying an opera ting system implies duplicating all its system files a[...]

  • Page 71

    71 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 8 . 1 . 6 S e t t i n g A c r o n i s O S S e l e c t o r o pt i o n s You can set Acr o nis OS Sele cto r opti o ns by clicking Option s in the Tools sidebar section or selecting a respective item o n the T o olbar or main menu. 8. 1. 6.1 Ge ne ra l opt io ns Acronis OS Selector is able to protect system [...]

  • Page 72

    72 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010  Administrator pass word – requ ired when a user tries to change any options and settings of Acronis OS Selector and o perating systems To disable global pas swords, leave both input fi elds blank. When the d efault operating system is booted without invoking the boot menu, you m ight have to enter th[...]

  • Page 73

    73 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 8. 1. 7.1 Re ac ti va ti n g t he Ac ro ni s OS S el ect or b oot m en u Because operating systems can change the Master Boot Rec ord (MBR) during installation, Acro nis OS Selector, which als o uses the MBR, might bec ome inoperab le. If this happens, you will not have to reinstall Acronis OS Selector, bu[...]

  • Page 74

    74 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 2. Set the prepared v o lume a ctive for the new operating sy ste m — see Setting a volu m e active (p. 35 ). When installing a n ew operating system fr om CD/DVD, selec t the CD item in the Op erating systems area of the Acr onis OS Selector main wind ow. When installing a n ew operating system fr om fl[...]

  • Page 75

    75 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 By setting the targ et disk t o be the firs t, you will force the boot part o f Wind o ws to be installed on that disk so that th e new operating system can boot, ev en if the first dis k is damaged or has been removed. However, you may choose not to d o it. The new o perating syst em will then boot from t[...]

  • Page 76

    76 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 however, not all o f them ar e willing to change operati ng systems completel y or have a second machine on which to install Linu x. The preferred option is to run W indows and L inux on a single machine. L in u x p ec ul iar it ies From the perspec tive of bootup, Linux, like Windo ws, has two parts:  [...]

  • Page 77

    77 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 8. 2 Ac ron is Di sk Ed ito r Acronis Disk Editor is a prof essional tool that performs a v ariet y o f acti o ns on a ha rd disk: with it, you can restore boot r ecords, repair files and folder st ructure, fin d lo st clust ers, remove computer virus code from a disk and much m o re. This progra m has muc[...]

  • Page 78

    78 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010  Help – lets you get h elp concerning the edi to r windo w, the progra m’s manufacturer and v ersio n. Using controls While all the operations can be acc essed from the menu, the mo st frequ ently used operations are available on the too lbar . You can access al most all o f t he program' s mai[...]

  • Page 79

    79 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 If you do not sav e your changes, y o u effecti v ely rej ect them. If you have made changes in a hard disk sector and decide t o exit th e editor without saving t hem, y ou will s ee a warning prompting you to save your changes. Writing a block from a fil e The Write to file menu item lets yo u to sav e t[...]

  • Page 80

    80 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 8 . 2 . 5 S e a r c h The Search menu l et s y ou search a disk for a line and to go to a disk sector accord ing to its absolute offset. A search line can be set both as char and as numeric (h ex adeci mal) values. During a search, you can ignore letter case as well as search for a given lin e at a given o[...]

  • Page 81

    81 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 3. Place the cursor at the v ery beginning of the first sect or byte (Absolute sector 0 , or 00 0 0 in Hex ). Then, hold down the Sh i ft ke y and use th e arrow keys to select th e first 445 bytes of the s ector. This will select the M BR c ode and disk signature. Tip . The exact cur so r posi tion is dis[...]

  • Page 82

    82 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 10. Place the cursor at the v ery beginning of the first sector byte (Absolute sector 0, or 00 0 0 in Hex ), and then click Read fr om fi l e . 11. In the Read from file wind ow, click Browse and specify the file storing the MBR c o de. 12. Click OK. The file conten t will be inserted into a sect o r from [...]

  • Page 83

    83 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 To r est or e f il es 1. In a file manager that supports Hex, open an exis ting .jpeg file similar to the delet ed file. Our goal is to find some infor m ation that can be used to disting uish these .jpeg files amon g the other data stored on the volu m e. Lets open a similar .jp eg image that was taken w [...]

  • Page 84

    84 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 9 G los sa ry A A ct iv e vo lum e The volume fro m which a machine starts. If no operating syst ems other than Windows are in stall ed o n your ma chine, the active volume is typically the sam e as the sy stem volume (p. 91 ). If an operating sys tem other than Windows, such as Linux, is installed on your[...]

  • Page 85

    85 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Bl oc k See Sector (p. 90 ). Bo ot s ect or The first sector (p. 90 ) of a disk (p. 83 ) or a volum e (p. 92 ) t hat contains the initial code t o start the operating system. The boot sector mus t end with a hexadecimal signatu re of 0xAA55. Bo ot v olu me The volume which contains files tha t are necessar[...]

  • Page 86

    86 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 C C lu ste r The unit of disk space allocation to store files in a fil e system. Each non-empty file completely occupies one o r more c lusters. The typical size of a cluster is 4 KB. When formattin g a volume, you can cho o se th e cluster size f or it. Smaller cluster sizes all ow for more efficient st o[...]

  • Page 87

    87 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 group is discontinu ed, thoug h its name is ke pt in the above registr y key. In case a dynamic disk is created or conne cted again, a disk gr oup with an incremental nam e is created. When moved to anoth er machine, a disk group is co nsid ered as foreign (p. 86 ) an d cannot be used until imported int o [...]

  • Page 88

    88 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 LDM Metadata partition 1 MB A dynamic MBR d isk (Disk 1) and a d ynamic GPT disk (Disk 2). For more informa tion about dynamic disks pleas e refer to the following Microsoft knowledge base articles: Disk Management ( Wind ows XP Professional Resour ce Kit) http://technet. m icrosoft.co m /en- us/library/bb[...]

  • Page 89

    89 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 A file system tracks free and occupied space, sup po rts folders (p. 86 ) and file na m es, and st o res the physical positions of files on a disk. Examples of file sys tems that are supported in Windo ws are FAT1 6 (also known simply as FA T) , FAT32, and NTFS. Examples of file sys tems that are supported[...]

  • Page 90

    90 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 G GP T d is k A disk whose partiti oning scheme (p. 89 ) is GUI D partition table (GPT). GPT disks are t y pically used by 64-bit operating system s, such as Windows XP Prof essional x64 Edition. See also MBR disk (p. 88 ). GU ID p ar tit io n ta bl e (G P T ) One of the two parti tio ning schemes of a dis[...]

  • Page 91

    91 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 Logical volumes usua lly store user d ata and s omet ime s t he fil es that are used by the installed operating system s. Unlike the number o f prim ary volumes, the number of logical volumes on the disk is unlimi ted. A logical volume is also called a logical drive. M M ac hin e A physical or virtual c om[...]

  • Page 92

    92 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 M irr or ed vo lu me A fault-tolerant volume whose da ta is duplicated on two physical dis ks (p. 90 ). Each of the two part s o f a m irrored v olume i s called a mirror. All of the data on o ne disk i s copied to another disk to provide data redundancy. If one of the hard disks fails, the data c an still[...]

  • Page 93

    93 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 P hys ic al di sk A disk (p. 83 ) that is physically a s eparate device. Thus, floppy disks, hard disks and CD-ROMs are physical disks. P ri ma ry pa rti ti on See Primary volu m e (p. 90 ). P ri ma ry v olu me A volume which is located on a portion of a basic disk (p. 81 ) and works as if it were on a sep[...]

  • Page 94

    94 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 S pa nne d vol um e A volume that consis ts of disk space from tw o or more dynamic disks (p. 84 ), in portions that do n o t need to be equally-siz ed. A spanned volume can r eside on up to 32 disks. Unlike mirrored (p. 88 ) and RAID-5 volumes, span ned volumes are not fault-t o lerant. Unl ike striped vo[...]

  • Page 95

    95 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 If only one Windo ws operating syst em is installed on your machin e, the system volume is usuall y the same as the boot v o lume (p . 82 ). If more than one Wind ows operating system is install ed on your machine, each o f these o perating systems normally has its own boot volume, wh ereas there is s till[...]

  • Page 96

    96 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000 - 2010 A volume letter is usually assigned when you for m at t he volume. It can be assigned, chang ed, or removed later wi tho ut affe cting the volume’s data. A volume letter is also called a drive letter. Vo lu me t ype The type of volu m e, which is determined by the volu m e structur e and by the type of d[...]