Page 3 - Hard Disk Management
A note on the side before we start, there are some features on the left navigation pane as seen in the screenshot above. Acronis Secure Zone, as the name suggests, allows the user to set a hidden secure partition on the hard disk; and are not regularly accessible by other software.
Now, back on the disk management functions.
Disk Cloning
The disk cloning feature is extremely convenient and easy to use -- not to mention very fast. Just plug in the drive you want to clone to, and then run this feature. The user can set new partitions on the disk, and designate what data on which partition of the source drive to copy the new drive. The partition size does not even need to be the same. For example, I recently cloned my old 320GB drive to a 500GB drive, and while I was cloning the data, the partition sizes were different. Acronis True Image will take care of that for you with some input from the user. The only complaint I have in this regard is when designing the partition sizes in the new drive, the disk size "Before" and "After" the set partition can be a bit confusing (Even describing it here is confusing myself, haha).
After the cloning is ready, it will require a reboot and Acronis will load before the Windows UI in a DOS-like screen to clone the disk. Cloning a couple hundred gigabytes of data was extremely quick and took less than 30 minutes in my specific case.
Add New Disk
Basically, it just streamlines the formatting and configuration of a new drive into Windows -- so you don't have to do it in Windows Disk Management.
Dynamic Volume Creation Wizard
I'm not going to lie: I was this close to crying when I noticed one of my features wasn't available. However, it actually turns out that it's not Acronis that doesn't support such a feature -- rather, it's the Home version of Windows that's unable to create a Dynamic Drive, because it doesn't support RAID.
Difference between Basic and Dynamic Drives
A basic disk is basically disk storage that can be read by all versions of Windows and MS-DOS. A basic disk contains similarly basic volumes, for example: primary and extended partitions and logical drives.
In contrast, a dynamic disk is disk storage that is only supported in Windows 2000, Windows XP Professional, and Windows Server 2003. Similarly, it contains dynamic volumes such as simple, striped, mirrored, spanned, and RAID-5 volumes. To me, the real spark lies with the fact that you can manage your disks and volumes without needing to restart Windows.
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Generally, there are no features in Acronis True Image that non-destructively resizes existing partitions on an installed hard drive -- that's left for Acronis Disk Director Suite. But I'm sure such features are already built into the software and not fully enabled.
Page Index
1. Introduction, User Interface, Installation
2. Backup and Recovery
3. Hard Drive Management
4. Networking Features
5. Acronis Universal Restore
6. Impressions and Conclusion
