Acronis Disk Director Suite

As I have been experimenting with different Linux distributions, while still holding on to Windows for certain programs, I soon came to the conclusion that there must be a better way to manage the boot process than with the GRUB or LILO boot manager. For one thing, it is text based, and the boot options can be very confusing to understand. In addition, each version of Linux that is installed wants to use its own bootloader, often overwriting other boot loaders on the system. Finally, when one bootloader is overwritten, it can be hard to add the first version of Linux to the new Linux's bootloader menu.

After a little bit of research, I began to try out various boot loaders, but very few had all of the obtions I was looking for. Then, in some random forum, I came across a posting that advocated the use of the Acronis O.S. Selector, which is part of the Acronis Disk Director Suite. I looked it up online, and found that, unfortunately, it is not a freeware application, like many of the programs I had been trying, but that it was priced at 49.99. After reading the features, however, I decided to give the 15-day trial version a shot.

Included in the Acronis Disk Disk Director suite is the O.S. Selector, a partition manager, a partition recovery tool, a disk editor, and a tool that creates a rescue disk.

My immediate focus in testing was the O.S. Selector. I installed it on my computer that had, at that time, Windows and a copy of Mandriva on it. I then ran the O.S. detection wizard included in the suite. To my disappointment, the wizard only discovered Windows. after a few more attempts, I realized that it was not happening. I was expecting that, however, because the person who had recommended the software said specifically to install it FIRST. [A while later I would find out that it was not the software's problem, but an error in the way I had partitioned my drives.] I then went on to install a fresh copy of Mandriva, which was no big loss since the installed copy was only a day or two old.

I was very pleased with the results. On boot, there is a typical Windows-looking dialog box, with icons representing each installed operating system, plus any bootable external media connected to the computer. The program provides its own mouse drivers, and the user simply can double click the desired O.S. icon to boot the machine For security purposes, the program can be password-protected, and, for convenience, a default operating system can be booted after an adjustable timeout period.

At the time, I was only running Windows and Linux, but after I purchased a copy of the program, I did some more experimenting. I found it was very easy to run multiple distributions of Linux. For those that are more daring, the program can also be configured to run with a wide array of other operating systems. For instance, I installed a version of OSX on my Dell notebook [Thanks to OSx86project.org], and the O.S. Selector recognized it as a bootable operating system and allowed it to boot, even though it did not actually recognize the operating system or file structure.

Beyond the O.S. selector, I found that the other tools in the suite proved quite useful, as well. The included partitioning tool recognizes Fat16, Fat32, and the NTFS file system for Windows, and it also supports and works with Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, and Linux Swap file systems as easily as it does with the Windows file systems. It can create, delete, format, stretch, shrink, split, and merge partitions, and it can even defragment the file system. In addition, the program can hide partitions and change the drive letter of a Windows device.

The bootable media builder can create a restore disk for the O.S. Selector on several types of media, just in case an operating system that is newly installed decides to overwrite the MBR. I have not had the need to use the disk editor, but it is capable of fixing many problems with the file system, or, if one is not careful, destroying the file system.

All in all, I am very happy with the Acronis Disk Director Suite, and while there may be many freeware tools out there that can perform the same functions, I feel that the software is easily worth the 50 dollars I spent, and the fact that all of the tools work together as one application is a great bonus.