Paragon Hard Disk Manager Personal 8.0
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Every day of its life your PC’s hard drive beavers away storing, deleting
and generally changing the data you, as a user, require it to store. Because
the hard drive is part of the ‘overall’ picture of the PC, most users rarely
give it a second thought. Like most things mechanical, the only time they
are brought to mind is when something goes wrong.
The hard drive of any PC stores lots of information; in many instances
information that is not easily replaceable. One way of ensuring that this
valuable data is always available is by keeping duplicate copies of your
hard drive, either on a separate hard drive, CD, DVD or a hard drive
partition. To accomplish this, of course, you need the appropriate disk
management software, and this is where Paragon’s latest version of Hard Disk
Manager comes to the fore.
Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.0 comes in three versions: Personal,
Professional and Server, all of which are feature rich and extremely easy to
use. For this review we shall be taking a look at Paragon’s entry level disk
manager, Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8.0 Personal.
Giving it style
The first thing to hit you when you launch Hard Disk Manager is the much improved GUI (graphical user interface.) This has now been re-designed to give a crisper XP style appearance which closely mimics the user interface of other Paragon products.
Fig: 1 HDM's enhanced user interface
From
an aesthetic point of view this new GUI is certainly more pleasing on the
eye than the interface of previous versions of Hard Disk Manager. For
version 8.0 Paragon have also made serious improvements to the program’s
core engine
Wonderful Wizards
The key to a successful software application is ‘ease of use’. The less
complex the application is to use, the more popular it becomes. Hard Disk
Manager is an application built around simplicity. Each operation the user
undertakes has a corresponding one button wizard, which guides the user step
by step through even the most complex of operations, whether it be creating
a partition or copying a drive.
Fig: 2 Hard Disk Manager has loads of wizards
But, although Hard Disk Manager Personal has been designed for use by the
less technically minded, Paragon has not forgotten the needs of the more
advanced user. While it is an easy option to click a wizard button to
achieve a desired result, each wizard comes equipped with an ‘advanced’
option to allow advanced users’ to manually take control of the situation.
Paragon Hard Disk Manager is capable of accomplishing far more than disk
partitioning. With its numerous wizards, partitions are not only easily
created, but also resized, merged, undeleted and even cloned.
Fig: 3 Backing Up is easy with Hard Disk Manager 8.0
For added piece of mind Paragon Hard Disk Manager also ships with recovery
disk software. Creating the recovery CD is easy, as Hard Disk Manager has
its own build in software for the purpose of burning the CD. The recovery
disk can run in either DOS or Linux environments, with Linux, with its
ability to allow direct CD burning, being the default option.
Right Version for the job
While the Personal Edition of Paragon Hard Disk Manager can Create,
Partition, Delete and Copy the contents of your hard drive, it still only
support basic disk management features. Windows XP, for example, can
ultilise dynamic disks, the Personal edition of Paragon Hard Disk Manager
can recognise the layout of dynamic disks but is unable to perform any
operation on them other than a complete deletion. Microsoft’s Volume Shadow
Copy Service is also not supported by Hard Disk Manager Personal. If you
feel the lack of the above features is somewhat restricting, then you should
choose either the Professional or Server version of the software rather than
the Personal edition.
Backward Step
While all software has some restrictions as to what it can and cannot do,
the main disappointment for me in this latest version of Hard Disk Manager
Personal is the total removal of the Wipe Partition/Hard Disk and Clear free
Space options.
At some point in our computer’s life cycle the time always comes when it is
no longer possible or financially viable to upgrade the machine. At this
point one starts to consider whether one should give the PC away to a friend
or family member or, alternatively, donate the machine to charity.
It is at this point that one realises that something has to be done about
all the personal information stored on the hard drive. This is where the
Wipe Partition/Hard Disk option really comes into its own. It is just sad
that Paragon deemed it necessary to remove such a valuable option from the
Personal Edition. However, all is not lost, Paragon do have a standalone
application that will securely wipe the partition or hard drive. This is
available from Paragon as Paragon Disk Wiper.
Verdict
Hard Disk Manager Personal constantly bowls me over with its ease of use and
superb features and value for money. Managing your hard drive can be a
daunting prospect, yet Hard Disk Manager just breezes through the task. All
in all Paragon Hard Disk Manager Personal is reliable, flexible and packed
with useful disk management tools. It has to be said, for the price Hard
Disk Manager Personal is absolutely amazing!