Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Home User's Guide
Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2011. All rights reserved. "Acronis", "Acronis Compute with Confidence", "Acronis Recovery Manager", "Acronis Secure Zone", Acronis True Image, Acronis Try&Decide, and the Acronis logo are trademarks of Acronis, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. VMware and VMware Ready are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. Windows and MS-DOS are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
Table of contents 1 Introducing Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Home .........................................................................6 2 Installation and upgrade ........................................................................................................8 2.1 Hardware requirements ............................................................................................................8 2.2 Supported operating systems ..................................................................
5 Volume operations ..............................................................................................................28 5.1 Creating a volume ....................................................................................................................28 5.2 Resizing a volume ....................................................................................................................30 5.3 Copying a volume ......................................................................
7 Tools ...................................................................................................................................55 7.1 Acronis Bootable Media Builder ..............................................................................................55 7.1.1 7.1.2 7.2 8 How to create bootable media .................................................................................................................... 56 Working under bootable media .....................................
1 Introducing Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Home Acronis® Disk Director® 11 is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for managing disks and volumes. With a comprehensive set of operations, you can organize your hard disk and volume configuration for optimal performance, while keeping your data safe. Key features Acronis Disk Director offers many features including: § Create both basic and dynamic volumes The handy Create Volume wizard has been improved to support dynamic volumes creation.
§ § § § § § § § § Delete volumes New! Change file systems New! Clean up disks New! Hide/unhide volumes New! Specify i-node density New! Change a cluster size Explore volume data, even on Linux volumes before performing operations Preview changes made in disk and volume layout before applying them Browse through the detailed information about all hard disks, volumes and file systems § Acronis Recovery Expert Helps you to recover accidentally lost or deleted volumes on basic MBR disks.
2 Installation and upgrade This section answers questions that might arise before the product installation and guides you through the installation and upgrade of Acronis Disk Director. In this section Hardware requirements............................................................................. 8 Supported operating systems .................................................................... 8 Supported file systems ...............................................................................
2.3 Supported file systems Acronis Disk Director supports the following file systems for performing operations: § § § § § § § FAT16 FAT32 NTFS Ext2 Ext3 Reiser3 Linux SWAP The operations resulting in a change of volume size—that is: Create (p. 28), Resize (p. 30), Copy (p. 31), Move (p. 32), Merge (p. 33), Split (p. 35)—are not available for the XFS, Reiser4, HPFS and JFS file systems. 2.
During the installation of Acronis OS Selector, the hidden system folder BOOTWIZ will be created on your machine to keep the program loader. Acronis OS Selector will also copy operating system files found on your machine into this folder to avoid problems during the booting process and to simplify adding a new operating system in the future. Acronis OS Selector can be installed in the Typical or Custom mode.
Upgrading from the demo version of Acronis Disk Director 11 If you already have the demo version (p. 11) of Acronis Disk Director 11 installed and want to upgrade it to a full version: 1. Run Acronis Disk Director. 2. Select Help > Enter license key from the top menu, and then type in your license key for Acronis Disk Director. 2.
3 Basic concepts This section gives you a clear understanding of basic and dynamic disks and volume types. After reading this section, you will know the advantages and limitations of each possible volume configuration. In addition, you will be able to decide what types of disks and volumes best suit your needs for organizing data storage. In this section Basic and dynamic disks ...........................................................................12 Types of basic volumes ............................
By using Acronis Disk Director, you can convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk (p. 50). You may need to do so, for example, to install an operating system other than Windows on that disk. Converting a dynamic disk to basic may require deleting some volumes on it, such as volumes that occupy more than one disk. 3.2 Types of basic volumes A basic disk can store two types of volumes: primary volumes and logical volumes.
Striped volume A volume that resides on two or more dynamic disks and whose data is evenly distributed across equally-sized portions of disk space (called stripes) on those disks. Access to data on striped volumes is usually faster than on other types of dynamic volumes, because it can be performed simultaneously on multiple hard disks. Unlike a mirrored volume (p. 93), a striped volume does not contain redundant information, so it is not fault-tolerant. A striped volume is also known as a RAID-0 volume.
System volume This is the volume from which any of the installed Windows operating systems starts—even if more than one is installed. The system volume contains files that are necessary to start Windows, such as boot.ini and Ntldr. There is always one system volume, whereas each of the installed Windows operating systems usually stores its files on its own volume, called a boot volume. Boot volume This is the volume on which the files of a particular Windows operating system are stored.
What is the cause of misalignment All Windows operating systems earlier than Vista use a factor of 512 bytes to create volume clusters. The volume start is aligned to 512-byte sectors. Also, these operating systems use the Cylinder/Head/Sector (CHS) addressing scheme. Volumes created with this scheme are aligned by cylinders/tracks of the disk. Usually, a track consists of 63 physical sectors.
After the volumes are created, you can perform other operations with them (including changing their size) under any disk layout. How to fix volume misalignment using Acronis Disk Director Suppose that you have already created basic volumes on a disk with a 4-KB sector size, using Windows XP. Volumes already contain data. To align the misaligned volumes on the disk using Acronis Disk Director, clone this disk to another and then clone it back—see Disk cloning (p. 47).
4 Getting started After reading this section, you will know how to run and use Acronis Disk Director, what precautions you should take, and how to perform the most common tasks you might need. In this section Precautions ..............................................................................................18 User privileges ..........................................................................................18 Running Acronis Disk Director .....................................................
2. In the disk management area, examine the current layout of disks and volumes. 3. Add one or more management operations on disks and volumes to the queue of pending operations. These operations will take effect only after you commit them. 4. In the disk management area, examine how the layout of disks and volumes will look when the pending operations are completed. 5. Commit the pending operations.
1. Menu The menu provides access to all the actions, tools and settings of Acronis Disk Director. 2. Toolbar The toolbar displays the current disk layout (p. 22) and lets you perform the following actions on pending operations: Commit (p. 23), Undo and Redo (p. 23). Disk Management view The disk management area contains the table of disks and volumes and the graphical panel. 3. Table The table lists all the disks and their volumes and lets you select any of them to perform operations.
§ Online (Errors) I/O errors are found on a dynamic disk. If a disk has errors, we recommended you to repair it as soon as possible to avoid data loss. § Offline A dynamic disk is accessible in read only mode (if you switched it to offline previously), or not accessible at all (corrupted or intermittently unavailable). You can make the disk that you previously switched to offline, fully accessible—see Changing a disk status: offline to online (p. 52).
To find out more information about disk statuses, please refer to the Volume status descriptions article on the Microsoft website. Important! For instructions explaining how to repair volumes with erroneous statuses, please refer to the Troubleshooting Disk Management article on the Microsoft website. 4.6 Disk layout On a machine with two or more operating systems, representation of disks and volumes depends on which operating system is currently running.
view at the top, as well as in the graphical view at the bottom. Any volume changes, including changing the volume letter or label, are also immediately displayed. While an operation is pending it can be easily undone and redone—see Undoing pending operations (p. 23). 4.7.1 Pending operations Almost all the operations are considered pending before you commit them.
can examine information about disk and volume operations, including reasons any for failures. Physically, a log is a collection of XML files stored on the machine. Operations performed using bootable media are logged as well, but the log’s lifetime is limited to a current session. Rebooting eliminates the log, but you can save the log to a file while the machine is booted with the media. To browse the Log Select View -> View log from the menu.
Save all the filtered log entries to a file 1. Set filters (p. 25) to get a list of the log entries that satisfy the filtering criteria. 2. Click Save All to File. 3. In the opened window, specify a path and a name for the file. As a result, the log entries of that list will be saved. Delete all the log entries Click Clear Log. All the log entries will be deleted from the log, and a new log entry will be created. It will contain information about who deleted the entries and when. 4.8.
4.10 How to How to create a volume that spans across several disks? Create a dynamic volume (spanned or striped) by using the Create volume (p. 28) wizard. How to increase a volume size at the expense of other volumes' unallocated space? Resize (p. 30) the volume. How to merge two volumes without losing your data? Use the Merge (p. 33) operation. How to make the existing volume fault-tolerant? Add a mirror (p. 39) to this volume.
How clean up the disk? Use the Clean up disk (p. 53) operation. 27 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
5 Volume operations This section describes all the operations that you can perform with volumes in Acronis Disk Director. Acronis Disk Director must obtain exclusive access to the target disk/volume. This means no other disk management utilities (such as the Windows Disk Management utility) can access it at that time. If you receive a message stating that the disk/volume cannot be blocked, close the disk management applications that use this disk/volume and start again.
2. Specify the type that the new volume will have. Every volume type is provided with a brief description to let you better understand the advantages and limitations of each possible volume type. To learn more about volume types—see Types of basic volumes (p. 13) and Types of dynamic volumes (p. 13). The list of volume types contains only the types that are supported (p. 15) by the current operating system. 3.
§ Logical. Set the volume as Logical, if it is intended for data storage. 6. Click Finish to add the pending volume creation operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.
As a result you will get additional unallocated space, which will be adjacent to the volume that you are resizing. By default, this option does not apply to the boot volumes on the disk. To include these volumes, select the Use free space on boot volumes check box. 4. Examine how the resized volume will be located on the disk or disks, by using the preview area at the bottom of the window. 5. Click OK to add the pending volume resizing operation.
The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.4 Moving a volume This operation moves a volume by creating a new volume, copying the original volume’s content to it, and then deleting the original volume.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. Moving system, boot, and active volumes Important: Do not move any of these volumes unless you absolutely need to. If you want to transfer your system to a new hard disk, consider disk cloning instead—see Basic disk cloning (p. 47). The machine or its operating system will not always remain bootable after you move such volume.
the opposite action (merging a non-secured volume to a secured one), the main volume security settings will be assigned to the resultant volume. 5.6 Formatting a volume The formatting operation prepares a volume to store files and folders, by creating a file system on it. Caution: Formatting destroys all data that is currently stored on the volume. You may want to format a volume in the following cases: § When you are creating the volume.
NTFS file system. For example, these programs may incorrectly calculate the total and available space on such volumes. 5.7 Deleting a volume This operation deletes a selected volume. The space that was occupied by the volume becomes unallocated space on the corresponding disk or disks. Caution: After you delete the volume, all data that is stored on it will be lost. Tip: Deleting a mirrored volume means deleting both of its mirrors.
The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.9 Changing a volume label The volume label is a short name that you can assign to a volume to better differentiate it from other volumes.
5.10 Changing a drive letter Windows operating systems assign drive letters, such as C, to volumes to locate files and folders on them. You can set up, modify, or remove the drive letter of a volume that is supported by Windows; namely, a volume whose file system is FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS. The change will affect only the Windows operating system whose disk layout is currently selected— by default, the currently running Windows operating system.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.12 Converting a logical volume to primary This operation applies to basic disks whose partitioning style is MBR. It converts a logical volume on such disk to a primary volume. Each basic MBR disk can have either up to four primary volumes, or up to three primary volumes plus an unlimited number of logical volumes.
5.14 Setting a volume active This operation applies to primary volumes on basic MBR disks. To specify the volume from which the machine will start, you need to set a volume to become active. A disk can have only one active volume, so if you set a volume as active, the volume, which was previously active, will be automatically unset. To set a volume active 1. Right-click the primary volume you want to set as active, and then click Mark as active.
5.16 Removing a mirror Mirrored volumes provide fault tolerance by storing two exact copies of data—called mirrors—on two different disks. Removing a mirror from a mirrored volume means converting that volume to a simple volume, thus losing fault tolerance. The space that was occupied by the removed mirror becomes unallocated space on the corresponding disk (provided that that disk is not missing).
2. For one of the two mirrors, specify the volume label and/or drive letter that the mirror will have when it is converted to a volume. To not assign a drive letter to the volume, click Do not assign the letter. The other mirror will be assigned the drive letter and volume label of the original mirrored volume. 3. Click OK to add the pending mirrored volume breaking operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed.
4. Click OK to run the volume check. If the volume contains a very large number of files—for example, millions—the check can take a long time to complete. The results of the operation will be displayed in a separate window. Note: If the volume is in use, the tool can only check it for errors, but cannot repair them. The checking and fixing of errors on this volume will be performed the next time you restart the system. 5.
The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.22 Changing a file system This operation lets you change the volume file systems of the following type: § § FAT16 to FAT32 and back Ext2 to Ext3 and back The table below describes main differences between the file systems.
If the volume has mount points, they will be removed automatically. 2. Click OK to add the pending volume hiding operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 5.24 Unhiding a volume This operation applies to hidden volumes on basic MBR disks.
less i-nodes there are the in the system, the faster the “file system check” operation will be performed. § Use higher i-node density (that is, reduced Bytes per i-node value) for volumes that contain a large number of small files. This will allocate more space for i-nodes and less for data. The more i-nodes there are in the file system, the less likely you will not run of i-nodes. But, the “file system check” operation will be performed slower. 3.
6 Disk operations This section describes all the operations that you can perform with disks using Acronis Disk Director. Acronis Disk Director must obtain exclusive access to the target disk/volume. This means no other disk management utilities (such as the Windows Disk Management utility) can access it at that time. If you receive a message stating that the disk/volume cannot be blocked, close the disk management applications that use this disk/volume and start again.
6.2 Basic disk cloning This operation is available for basic MBR disks. The cloning operation transfers all the source disk data to a target disk. The source disk volumes can be cloned to the target disk “as is”, or resized automatically with respect to the target disk size. You may want to use cloning in the following cases: § If you are about to replace an old hard disk with a new one without reinstalling operating systems and applications on the new disk.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. Using advanced options When cloning a disk containing the system volume, you need to retain operating system bootability on the target disk volume, by copying the original disk's NT signature. The NT signature is a record that is kept in the disk’s master boot record and uniquely identifies the disk.
To convert a basic MBR disk to basic GPT 1. Right-click the basic MBR disk you want to convert to GPT, and then click Convert to GPT. An information window will pop up, stating that you are about to convert MBR to GPT. 2. Click OK to add the pending MBR to GPT disk conversion operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23).
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 6.5 Disk conversion: basic to dynamic You would want to convert a basic disk to dynamic in the following cases: § If you plan to use the disk as part of a dynamic disk group § If you want to achieve additional disk reliability for data storage. To convert a basic disk to dynamic 1.
To convert a dynamic disk to basic 1. Right-click the dynamic disk you need to convert, and then click Convert to basic. You will receive a final warning about the dynamic disk being converted to basic. You will be advised about the changes that will happen to the system if the chosen disk is converted from dynamic to basic.
When taking a dynamic disk whose volumes span across several disks offline, these volumes get statuses with respect to their type: Simple/Spanned/Striped volumes become Failed; Mirrored volumes become Failed Redundancy. The disk you took offline also becomes Missing. To recover Simple/Spanned/Striped volumes it is enough to take the offline disk to online (p. 52). To recover Mirrored volumes, you need to take the offline disk online, and then reactivate it.
For more information on volume statuses please refer to the following Microsoft article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771775.aspx 2. Click OK to add the pending foreign disks importing operation. The results of the pending operation are immediately displayed as if the operation had been performed. To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 6.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 23). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. Note: If you accidentally cleared an MBR disk with important data, it is still possible to recover the volumes on this disk by using Acronis Recovery Expert (p. 61). But do not forget to initialize the disk and set MBR partitioning scheme first. 54 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
7 Tools This section describes Acronis Bootable Media Builder and Acronis Recovery Expert tools. After reading this section, you will have learned how to create bootable media in order to use Acronis Disk Director on bare metal or outside of an operating system, and how to recover deleted or lost volumes. In this section Acronis Bootable Media Builder ..............................................................55 Acronis Recovery Expert ...................................................................
WinPE proved to be the most convenient bootable solution in large environments with heterogeneous hardware. Advantages: § Using Acronis Disk Director in Windows Preinstallation Environment provides more functionality than using Linux-based bootable media. Having booted PC-compatible hardware into WinPE, you can use not only Acronis Disk Director, but also PE commands and scripts and other plug-ins you've added to the PE.
2. 3. 4. 5. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=94bb6e34-d890-4932-81a55b50c657de08&DisplayLang=en Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows 7 (PE 3.0): http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=696DD665-9F76-4177-A81139C26D3B3B34&displaylang=en [optional] Burn the WAIK to DVD or copy to a flash drive. Install the Microsoft .NET Framework v.2.0 from this kit (NETFXx86 or NETFXx64, depending on your hardware.) Install Microsoft Core XML (MSXML) 5.0 or 6.
Parameters When specifying multiple parameters, separate them with spaces. acpi=off Disables Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI). You may want to use this parameter when experiencing problems with a particular hardware configuration. noapic Disables Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller (APIC). You may want to use this parameter when experiencing problems with a particular hardware configuration.
module_name=off Disables the module whose name is given by module_name. For example, to disable the use of the SATA module, specify: sata_sis=off pci=bios Forces the use of PCI BIOS instead of accessing the hardware device directly. You may want to use this parameter if the machine has a non-standard PCI host bridge. pci=nobios Disables the use of PCI BIOS; only direct hardware access methods will be allowed.
When adding the plug-in to the existing PE ISO: § § 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Select Use WinPE files located in the folder I specify Specify the path to the folder where the WinPE files are located. [optional] Specify Windows drivers to be added to Windows PE. Once you boot a machine into Windows PE, the drivers can help you access the device where the backup archive is located. Click Add and specify the path to the necessary *.
3. From the list of supported video modes, choose the appropriate one by typing its number (for example, 318), and then press ENTER. If you do not wish to follow this procedure every time you boot from media on a given hardware configuration, re-create the bootable media with the appropriate mode number (in our example, vga=0x318) typed in the Kernel parameters window—see Linux-based bootable media (p. 57) for details. 7.1.2.
In case your volumes are damaged and the machine fails to boot—for example, after a power outage or a system error—use the bootable version of Acronis Disk Director and run Acronis Recovery Expert. It will help you to recover boot sectors and partition tables on hard disks and make your system bootable again. The Recovery Expert first attempts to recover volumes "as is", i.e. logical volumes will be recovered as logical and primary as primary respectively.
§ Fast – (recommended) checks the beginning of each side of every cylinder of the selected disks. It takes less time, and should find all deleted volumes in most cases. § Complete – checks every sector on the selected disks for file system. It is more thorough and requires much more time to perform than the Fast method. 4. In the Searching for deleted volumes window, Acronis Recovery Expert scans all the selected hard disk drives for deleted volumes.
8 Acronis OS Selector Acronis OS Selector is a powerful, reliable and easy-to-use boot manager that allows several operating systems on a single machine and lets you create different configurations for any installed operating system, including Windows 7.
Operations This section includes actions available for selected operating systems or their shortcuts — see Using shortcuts (p. 69).
8.1.3.1 Booting operating systems You can boot any operating system with Acronis OS Selector: § § From the boot menu (if activated) From under Windows from the Acronis OS Selector main window Booting an OS using the boot menu Having turned on the machine, wait for the Acronis OS Selector boot menu to be invoked and select and double-click an operating system to boot.
§ § Click Set Password in the Operations section of the main window sidebar Enter and confirm a password in the Set Operating System Password dialog and click OK. An operating system password must be at least six characters long. You can also set an operating system password by clicking Set Password on the toolbar, in the OS section of the main menu, or in the context menu, invoked by a right-click. 8.1.3.
Moreover, you can choose the disk order when installing a new Windows operating system so that its boot files are installed on the same disk where its main part resides — see Installing another Windows OS on a different disk (p. 75). Doing so makes operating systems on your first, second and so on disks fully independent. You will be able, for example, to boot from the second disk even if the first one is damaged or disconnected.
Advanced You cannot hide a volume under a Windows 2000 operating system just by setting the Hidden (p. 69) options. To perform this operation, you will need to check the Force hiding partitions box available in this section. 8.1.4 Editing operating systems This section provides the means of operating system and shortcut management. 8.1.4.
8.1.4.3 Deleting operating systems from the OS Selector boot menu With the Delete operation, you can delete any operating system from the OS Selector boot menu and main window along with its shortcuts. You can delete all Windows system folders from the hard disk and at the same time delete Windows from the boot menu by selecting the Delete the operating system directories check-box in the Confirmation dialog window. 8.1.4.
Whatever the location of the operating system selected, you can set options of available partitions, for example, hide some of them. These settings will be applied to the partitions each time you boot the detected operating system. 4. If you selected Detect OS in MBR or on a FAT hard disk partition, select if you want to use Boot sector on partition or Boot sector in file. Generally, the first setting will be enough.
§ Refresh rate – you can manually set the display refresh rate, which is set to 60Hz by default. If you select Optimal, the program will determine your graphics configuration automatically and set the maximum available refresh rate. The maximum rate that can be set manually is 150Hz. 8.1.6.
§ § The most popular Linux distributions The most popular Unix distributions: FreeBSD, Solaris, QNX Below, you will find instructions for some of the most typical situations related to adding a second operating system to a machine that already has one installed. Please be aware that peculiarities of some operating systems may place additional limitations and/or require additional actions. Please note that a newly installed operating system will be set as the default in the Acronis OS Selector boot menu.
Acronis OS Selector breaks this limitation and eliminates the need to worry about the Windows installation sequence. Installing another Windows OS on a separate volume 1. Prepare a free primary volume for the new Windows system. You can do this by using unallocated space. For volume creation instructions see Creating a volume (p. 28). If there is no unallocated space, you can free up space by resizing respective volumes — see Resizing a volume (p. 30).
Installing another Windows OS on a different disk To install a new Windows operating system onto a different disk, do the following: 1. When installing a new operating system from CD/DVD, select the CD item in the Operating systems area of the Acronis OS Selector main window. 2. When installing a new operating system from floppy disks, create a new Boot from floppy item by selecting OS -> New -> Boot from floppy in the Menu. 3.
list provided, select an operating system to update by replacing it with a new copy of Windows 2000/XP. When a new operating system is configured, click Proceed to confirm the selected operations. If Acronis OS Selector cannot automatically determine the location of the system folders, you will have to provide the information manually. System folders might be located on: 1) Any physical hard disks shown in the list 2) Any media unsupported by BIOS 8.1.7.
Installing Linux Having created volumes, you can start Linux installation from a bootable CD/DVD with Linux distribution created from images that are usually located on the first installation CD/DVD. Because Linux is installed only into volumes prepared for it, there is no need to create any special properties for the new operating system to hide or change status of any volumes.
8.2.2 Main window, menu and controls The main window displays the numbers of disk and sector where the internal program cursor is positioned. The menu of Acronis Disk Editor contains the following items: § § Disk – lets you browse properties of the selected disk. § View – lets you select a view mode for more convenient data presentation. By default, the main window of the program displays the selected volume or disk in the hexadecimal (Hex) mode.
Editing disk data Point the cursor to the block that you need to edit in the hexadecimal or character area in the main window. Then, enter the required value. In other view modes, you should edit values in the appropriate fields. Use the Undo menu item to discard the last one or more changes. Undo all discards all the changes you made. Saving your changes The changes you made will not be applied to the given disk sector immediately. Be sure to click Save sector for changes to take effect.
The editor offers seven view modes: § § § § § § § HEX (hexadecimal mode) Partition table FAT16 boot sector FAT32 boot sector FAT32 FS info sector NTFS boot sector FAT folder The hexadecimal view mode is the main and the most universal. Other modes that represent some kind of patterns for viewing data let you work with decoded values of bytes or groups of bytes.
The master boot record (MBR) is located in the first sector of the hard disk and stores information about the hard disk partitioning and code that is loaded with BIOS. Information stored in the MBR is crucial for the machine booting. If the MBR code is corrupted due to boot sector viruses or human error, the machine becomes unbootable and you cannot access the data stored on the hard disks. By having the MBR code copy saved in a safe place, you will protect your machine against such disasters.
To copy the MBR to another disk 1. In Acronis Disk Director, right-click the source disk whose MBR code you need to copy, and then click Edit. 2. In Acronis Disk Editor, press the F2 key to switch to the Hex view mode. 3. Place the cursor at the very beginning of the first sector byte (Absolute sector 0, or 0000 in Hex). Then, hold down the Shift key and use the arrow keys to select the first 445 bytes of the sector. This will select the MBR code and disk signature. Tip.
8.2.6.4 Restoring deleted files Acronis Disk Editor can be used to restore deleted files even after the volume has been formatted or deleted. A file can be restored only if: § § it was stored contiguously as a unit on this volume, i.e. the file should not be fragmented. it was not overwritten by another data. Restoring files with Acronis Disk Editor is a bit tricky and requires some hex editor working skills. To restore a file, you need to obtain some distinctive information about it from the Hex view.
7. In the Write to file window, click Browse and specify the path and file name. For example, C:\image_1.jpeg. 8. Click OK to save the file. 9. Open this file in any image viewer. If you see the image, then you did everything right. If you do not see the image, make sure that you select the image data exactly as described in step 5. To restore another .jpeg file, repeat the steps 4–9. 84 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
9 Glossary A Active volume The volume from which a machine starts. If no operating systems other than Windows are installed on your machine, the active volume is typically the same as the system volume (p. 95). If an operating system other than Windows, such as Linux, is installed on your machine, the active volume can be the volume where the program known as a boot loader, such as GRUB, is stored. The active volume is either a primary volume (p. 94) (on a basic disk) or a simple volume (p.
Block See Sector (p. 94). Boot sector The first sector (p. 94) of a disk (p. 87) or a volume (p. 96) that contains the initial code to start the operating system. The boot sector must end with a hexadecimal signature of 0xAA55. Boot volume The volume which contains files that are necessary for a particular Windows operating system to start and work. If only one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, the boot volume is usually the same as the system volume (p. 95).
C Cluster The unit of disk space allocation to store files in a file system. Each non-empty file completely occupies one or more clusters. The typical size of a cluster is 4 KB. When formatting a volume, you can choose the cluster size for it. Smaller cluster sizes allow for more efficient storage of smaller files by reducing the amount of wasted disk space; but larger files may become more fragmented across the volume, which may increase the amount of time that is needed to access them.
group is discontinued, though its name is kept in the above registry key. In case a dynamic disk is created or connected again, a disk group with an incremental name is created. When moved to another machine, a disk group is considered as foreign (p. 90) and cannot be used until imported into the existing disk group. The import updates the configuration data on both the local and the foreign disks so that they form a single entity.
Disk 1 MBR LDM database Disk 2 Protecti GPT ve MBR Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR) LDM database 1 MB GPT LDM Metadata partition 1 MB A dynamic MBR disk (Disk 1) and a dynamic GPT disk (Disk 2). For more information about dynamic disks please refer to the following Microsoft knowledge base articles: Disk Management (Windows XP Professional Resource Kit) http://technet.microsoft.com/enus/library/bb457110.
Files are stored in a file system (p. 90) on a volume. In different file systems, files can be stored in different ways, with different file name requirements and different ways to write the full path to the file in the folder (p. 90) tree. File system A data structure that is used to store and manage files (p. 89) on a volume. A file system tracks free and occupied space, supports folders (p. 90) and file names, and stores the physical positions of files on a disk.
Free space Space on a volume that is not occupied by data such as files and folders. Not to be confused with unallocated space (p. 96) on a disk. G GPT disk A disk whose partitioning scheme (p. 93) is GUID partition table (GPT). GPT disks are typically used by 64-bit operating systems, such as Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. See also MBR disk (p. 92). GUID partition table (GPT) One of the two partitioning schemes of a disk. See in Partitioning scheme (p. 93).
Logical volume A volume which is located on a basic MBR disk (p. 92) and is not a primary volume (p. 94). Logical volumes usually store user data and sometimes the files that are used by the installed operating systems. Unlike the number of primary volumes, the number of logical volumes on the disk is unlimited. A logical volume is also called a logical drive. M Machine A physical or virtual computer uniquely identified by an operating system installation.
The operation of converting a simple volume (p. 94) to mirrored is called adding a mirror. Mirrored volume A fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on two physical disks (p. 93). Each of the two parts of a mirrored volume is called a mirror. All of the data on one disk is copied to another disk to provide data redundancy. If one of the hard disks fails, the data can still be accessed from the remaining hard disks. Volumes that can be mirrored include the system volume (p. 95) and a boot volume (p.
Physical disk A disk (p. 87) that is physically a separate device. Thus, floppy disks, hard disks and CD-ROMs are physical disks. Primary partition See Primary volume (p. 94). Primary volume A volume which is located on a portion of a basic disk (p. 85) and works as if it were on a separate hard disk. Primary volumes often store files that are necessary to start the machine or an operating system. Many operating systems can start only from a primary volume.
Spanned volume A volume that consists of disk space from two or more dynamic disks (p. 88), in portions that do not need to be equally-sized. A spanned volume can reside on up to 32 disks. Unlike mirrored (p. 93) and RAID-5 volumes, spanned volumes are not fault-tolerant. Unlike striped volumes (p. 95), spanned volumes do not provide faster data access. Stripe Each of the several equally-sized portions of disk space that make up a striped volume (p. 95) or a RAID-5 volume.
If only one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, the system volume is usually the same as the boot volume (p. 86). If more than one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, each of these operating systems normally has its own boot volume, whereas there is still only one system volume. In terms of volume type, the system volume can be a primary volume on a basic disk, or a simple volume on a dynamic disk. See also boot volume (p. 86).
A volume letter is usually assigned when you format the volume. It can be assigned, changed, or removed later without affecting the volume’s data. A volume letter is also called a drive letter. Volume type The type of volume, which is determined by the volume structure and by the type of disk on which the volume resides. The following is the list of volume types with short descriptions: § § Basic volume (p. 85): A volume on a basic disk. Can be one of the following types: § Primary volume (p.
