Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Advanced Server User's Guide
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Table of contents 1 Introducing Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Advanced .................................................................... 6 2 Acronis Disk Director components ........................................................................................... 8 3 2.1 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Management Console .......................................................8 2.2 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Agent for Windows ...........................................................8 2.
6 Volume operations ................................................................................................................ 35 6.1 Creating a volume ....................................................................................................................35 6.2 Resizing a volume ....................................................................................................................37 6.3 Copying a volume ...................................................................
8 Tools...................................................................................................................................... 63 8.1 Acronis Bootable Media Builder ..............................................................................................63 8.1.1 8.1.2 How to create bootable media ..................................................................................................................64 Working under bootable media.............................................
Introducing Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Advanced 1 Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Advanced is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for managing disks and volumes on local and remote machines. With a comprehensive set of operations, you can organize your hard disk and volume configuration for optimal performance, while keeping your data safe.
Disk and volume management operations Experience the vast array of disk and volume management operations: Resize, move, copy, split and merge volumes without data loss or destruction Delete volumes and clean up disks Format and label volumes, change file systems, clusters size, assign volume letters, and set volumes active Hide/unhide volumes Specify i-node density Initialize newly added hard disks Explore volume data, even on Linux volumes, before performing operations Preview cha
2 2.1 Acronis Disk Director components Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Management Console The management console is an administrative tool for remote or local access to Acronis agents. 2.2 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Agent for Windows The agent provides disk management functionality such as, creating, resizing and merging volumes, cloning disks, converting disks, changing a disk partitioning style between MBR and GPT or changing a disk label, etc.
3 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 Before installation ...................................................................................... 9 Installation ............................................................................................... 11 Upgrading Acronis Disk Director ......................................................
Windows SBS 2003/SBS 2008 Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows Server 2003/2008 x64 Editions Windows Vista - all editions except for Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium Windows 7 - all editions except for the Starter and Home editions Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Management Console Windows XP Home Editions/XP Professional SP2+ Windows Server 2003/Server 2008 Windows SBS 2003/SBS 2008 Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows Server 2003/2008 x64 Editions Windows Vi
3.2 Installation This section helps answer questions that might arise during the product installation. 3.2.1 Where to install the components The minimum configuration that enables you to perform disk management operations on a machine includes Agent and Management Console. Connect the console to the machine where the agent is installed and perform disk management operations on the machine. An agent has to be installed on each machine you want to manage.
If you choose to create a dedicated user account for the service (recommended), the setup program will create the following user account: Acronis Agent User The newly created account is given the following privileges: The account is assigned the Log on as a service, Adjust memory quotas for a process, and Replace a process level token user rights. The account is included in the Backup Operators group. If you choose to specify an existing local or domain user account—for example, .
The procedures below assume that you have an upgrade license key, but you can also use these procedures if you have a full license key. Upgrading Acronis Disk Director 10 Server to Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Server Before proceeding with the upgrade, make sure that: You have the license key for Acronis Disk Director 10 Server. You have a full or upgrade license key for Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Server. The upgrade procedure 1. 2. 3. 4.
3.5 Technical Support Maintenance and Support Program If you need assistance with your Acronis product, please go to http://www.acronis.eu/support/ Product Updates You can download the latest updates for all your registered Acronis software products from our website at any time after logging into your Account (https://www.acronis.eu/my) and registering the product. See Registering Acronis Products at the Website (http://kb.acronis.com/content/4834) and Acronis Website User Guide (http://kb.acronis.
4 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 ........................................................................... 15 Types of basic volumes ..........................
By using Acronis Disk Director, you can convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk (p. 58). 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. 4.2 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. 90), 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.
Active volume This is the volume from which the machine starts after you switch it on.
Windows 7 Starter + + + - - Windows 7 Home Premium + + + - - Windows 7 Professional + + + + - Windows 7 Ultimate + + + + - 4.6 Volume alignment in disks with a 4-KB sector size When a new volume is created, its beginning is aligned with the disk's physical sector boundaries. It ensures that each file system allocation unit (cluster) on the volume starts and ends on the boundaries of the disk's physical sectors.
Many hard disk drive manufacturers supply their modern drives with controllers that can shift addressing offset to one sector (63 sector becomes 64 sector), so volumes will appear aligned. How to work with 4-KB sector size disks using Acronis Disk Director Suppose that you added a new 4-KB sector size hard disk drive with to a machine that is running Windows XP only. There are no volumes on this drive yet.
5 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 .............................................................................................. 21 User privileges .......................................................................................... 21 Running Acronis Disk Director .................................................
5. In the Disk management view, examine how the layout of disks and volumes will look when the pending operations are completed. 6. Commit the pending operations. Monitor the operation progress in the Tasks view. Use the Log view to examine the history of operations performed on the machine. Some operations, such as changing the size of a volume from which Windows starts, may require restarting the machine.
The Navigation tree lets you navigate across the following product views: Disk management (p. 23) Tasks (p. 27) Log (p. 29) The Shortcuts bar appears under the navigation tree. It offers you an easy and convenient way of connection to the machines in demand by adding them as shortcuts. To add a shortcut to a machine 1. Connect the console to a managed machine. 2. In the navigation tree, right-click the machine's name (a root element of the navigation tree), and then select Create shortcut.
Graphical panel The graphical panel at the bottom of the view provides visual information about all the disks and their volumes for better understanding of the volume configuration. The graphical panel also lets you select both the volumes and disks to perform operations on them. 5.4.1.1 Performing operations In Acronis Disk Director, all operations on disks and volumes are performed in the same way. To perform any operation 1.
3. Click Proceed to execute the operations. You will not be able to undo any operations after you choose to proceed the operation. To quit the Pending operations window without committing, click Cancel. If you try to exit Acronis Disk Director while there are pending operations that are not yet committed, you will be asked whether you want to commit them. Quitting the program without committing the pending operations effectively cancels them.
5.4.1.3 Disk and volume information In the table and graphical panel—along with the type, size, letter, partitioning scheme, and other information about disks and volumes—you can also check their status. The status helps you to estimate the condition of a disk or volume. Disk statuses Check the disk status to estimate whether the disk is functioning without problems. Disk statuses are displayed in the graphical panel below their capacity.
Here are brief descriptions of the most common volume statuses: Healthy A basic or dynamic volume is accessible and functioning correctly. This is the normal volume status. The Healthy status often has a number of substatuses that are displayed in the table view (in parentheses) and in the graphical view (below the volume size and separated by a semicolon). The System, Boot and Active substatuses are the most common and described in the Active, system, and boot volumes (p. 17) section.
Stop a task Click Stop. Stopping the task aborts the running operation. The task enters the "Stopping" state first, then becomes "Idle". Attention: Stopping the partitioning operation can easily violate a disk’s information integrity by making data inaccessible. Also, your machine operability may be severely affected (the operating system will stop loading, applications will stop running). Delete a task Click Delete. Refresh tasks table Click Refresh.
(if the user chooses to stop the task) or Running (on selecting Ignore/Retry or another action, such as Reboot, that can put the task to the Running state.) Stopping. The user can stop a running task or a task that needs interaction. The task changes to the Stopping state and then to the Idle state. 5.4.2.2 Task statuses A task can have one of the following statuses: Error; Warning; OK. A task status is derived from the result of the last run of the task.
To Do Select a single log entry Click on it. Select multiple log entries non-contiguous: hold down CTRL and click the log entries individually contiguous: select a single log entry, then hold down SHIFT and click another entry. All the entries between the first and last selections will be selected too. View a log entry’s details 1. Select a log entry. 2. Do one of the following Click View Details. The log entry's details will be displayed in a separate window.
to filter information messages Sort log entries by date Click the column's header to sort the log entries in ascending order. Click it and time; type; message once again to sort the log entries in descending order. Configuring the log table By default, the table has three columns that are displayed, the others are hidden. If required, you can hide the shown columns and show the hidden ones. To show or hide columns 1. Right-click any column header to open the context menu.
The option defines the fonts to be used in the Graphical User Interface of Acronis Disk Director. The Menu setting affects the drop-down and context menus. The Application setting affects the other GUI elements. The preset is: System Default font for both the menus and the application interface items. To make a selection, choose the font from the respective combo-box and set the font's properties. You can preview the font's appearance by clicking the button to the right. 5.4.
5.4.6 Collecting system information The system information collection tool gathers system information about the machine and saves it to a file. You may want to provide this file when contacting Acronis technical support. To collect system information 1. Select Help -> About -> Collect system information from the top menu. 2. Specify where to save the file with system information. 5.
How to work with hard disk drives that use 4-KB sector size? Follow the guidelines described in the Volume alignment in disks having a 4-KB sector size (p. 19) section. How to save, copy and restore the MBR? Read the Usage examples (p. 75) section of Acronis Disk Editor. How to change the volume's cluster size? Use the Change cluster size (p. 49) operation. How clean up the disk? Use the Clean up disk (p. 61) operation. How to repair the failed member of the RAID-5 volume? Use the Repair RAID (p.
6 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.
To create a new volume 1. Run the Create Volume Wizard by right-clicking any unallocated space, and then click Create volume. 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. 16) and Types of dynamic volumes (p. 16). The list of volume types contains only the types that are supported (p.
Letter (by default, the first free letter of the alphabet). Assign a drive letter to the volume to be able to locate files and folders on it. If the new volume is basic, specify whether it will be: Primary. Set the volume as Primary, if you plan to install an operating system on it. Mark the primary volume as Active, if you need the machine to start from this volume. Logical. Set the volume as Logical, if it is intended for data storage. 6.
Take free space from other volumes With this option, other volumes on the disk will be reduced so that only a specified percentage of the corresponding current free space will remain on each of those volumes. 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.
4. Specify the size of the new volume. This size cannot be less than the size of data on the original volume. For a basic volume, you can increase its size only by taking unallocated space that is adjacent to it. In the volume layout diagram at the bottom of the window, you can specify the space that the volume will occupy on each of the selected disks, by typing the sizes or by dragging the sliders. 5. Click Finish to add the pending volume copying operation.
4. Specify the size of the new volume. This size cannot be less than the size of data on the original volume. For a basic volume, you can increase its size only by taking unallocated space that is adjacent to it. 5. In the volume layout diagram at the bottom of the window, you can specify the space that the volume will occupy on each of the selected disks, by typing the sizes or by dragging the sliders. 6. Click Finish to add the pending volume moving operation.
At the bottom of the window, you can estimate how the resultant volume will look like after the merging. 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. 24). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them.
More about cluster sizes Using the default cluster size is normally the best option. Smaller cluster sizes allow for more efficient storage if the volume is to contain a vast number of very small files. Bigger cluster sizes make it possible for the volume to have a size beyond normal limits. For example, you can create a 4-GB volume with the FAT16 file system, by using a cluster size of 64 KB.
Caution: Volumes that contain encrypted files cannot be split. To split a volume 1. Right-click the volume that you need to split, and then click Split volume. 2. To move some files and folders from the original volume to the new volume, select the Move selected files to created volume check box and click Select. Then select the files and folders that you want to move. Caution: When splitting a boot volume, avoid moving system folders, such as Windows or Program Files.
Label characters not allowed in FAT16 and FAT32 The FAT16 and FAT32 file systems do not allow the following characters in the volume label: backslash (\), slash (/), colon (:), asterisk (*), question mark (?), quotation mark ("), less than sign (<), greater than sign (>), and pipe (|). Volumes whose labels cannot be changed You cannot assign a volume label to a volume whose file system is shown as Unsupported, Not formatted, or Linux swap.
The size of the converted volume might differ slightly from that of the original primary volume, because some space might be required to store supplementary information. Caution: Avoid converting the active volume or the system volume to logical. Otherwise, the machine will likely become unbootable. You can later convert the volume back to primary—see Convert to primary (p. 45). To convert a primary volume to logical 1.
To change a partition type 1. Right-click the volume whose partition type you need to change, and then click Change partition type. 2. Select the desired partition type from the list—for example, 017h Hidden NTFS, HPFS. 3. Click OK to add the pending partition type changing 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. 24).
2. Select the disk on which you want to place the mirror. The disks that do not have enough unallocated space to create the mirror are not available for selection. If you are adding a mirror to a basic volume or are placing the mirror on a basic disk, you will receive a warning that the corresponding disk (or disks) will be converted to dynamic. 3. Click OK to add the pending addition of a mirror to the volume operation.
6.17 Breaking a mirrored volume Mirrored volumes provide fault tolerance by storing two exact copies of data—called mirrors—on two different disks. Breaking a mirrored volume means converting its two mirrors into two independent simple volumes with initially identical content. One of the two volumes will retain the drive letter and volume label of the mirrored volume. You can assign a drive letter and/or volume label to the other volume. This operation differs from removing a mirror—see Remove mirror (p.
This operation enables you to verify the logical integrity of a file system on a volume (for FAT16/32 and NTFS file systems) and repair any errors found. Hard disk volumes should be checked before configuring any operation on them—see Precautions (p. 21). Acronis Disk Director does not perform the checking itself, rather it launches the Check Disk tool (Chkdsk.exe) included in Windows operating system. To check a volume 1. Right-click the volume whose file system you need to check, and then click Check. 2.
To change cluster size 1. Right-click the volume whose cluster size you need to change, and then click Change cluster size. 2. Select the required cluster size from the list. The default cluster size is marked in the list as (default). The default cluster size depends on the volume size and the type of the file system. For example, the default cluster size for up to 2-TB NTFS volumes is 4 KB.
6.23 Hiding a volume This operation applies to volumes on basic MBR disks. Hiding a volume means changing the volume type so that the operating system cannot "see" this volume. You may want to hide a volume in order to protect information from unauthorized or casual access. Hiding a volume does not affect letters assigned to other volumes, but the hidden volume loses its letter and this letter becomes free for assignment.
To repair RAID-5 volume 1. Click the RAID-5 volume you need to repair, and then click Repair RAID. The RAID-5 volume whose member has failed is in the Data Redundancy status. 2. Select the target disk where the reconstructed data will reside. The unallocated space on the target disk has to be at least the size of the RAID-5 volume member. If you select a basic disk, it will be automatically converted to dynamic. 3. Click OK to add the pending repairing RAID-5 volume operation.
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 24). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 53 Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
7 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.
7.2 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. 24). 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. 24).
To perform the pending operation you will have to commit it (p. 24). Exiting the program without committing the pending operations will effectively cancel them. 7.5 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/RAID5 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. 60). To recover Mirrored/RAID-5 volumes, you need to take the offline disk online, and then reactivate it.
whether you are importing all the required disks of the disk group. When importing all the required disks, all their volumes have the Healthy status. Statuses other than Healthy indicate that not all of the disks were imported. 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. 24). 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. 70). But do not forget to initialize the disk and set MBR partitioning scheme first.
8 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 .............................................................. 63 Acronis Recovery Expert .................................................................
PE-based bootable media PE-based bootable media contains a minimal Windows system called Windows Preinstallation Environment (WinPE) and Acronis Plug-in for WinPE, that is, a modification of Acronis Disk Director that can run in the preinstallation environment. WinPE proved to be the most convenient bootable solution in large environments with heterogeneous hardware.
2. 3. 4. 5. Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows Vista (PE 2.0): http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C7D4BC6D-15F3-4284-9123679830D629F2&displaylang=en Automated Installation Kit (AIK) for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 (PE 2.1): 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.
Kernel parameters This window lets you specify one or more parameters of the Linux kernel. They will be automatically applied when the bootable media starts. These parameters are typically used when experiencing problems while working with the bootable media. Normally, you can leave this field empty. You also can specify any of these parameters by pressing F11 while in the boot menu. Parameters When specifying multiple parameters, separate them with spaces.
nofw Disables the FireWire (IEEE1394) interface support. nopcmcia Disables detection of PCMCIA hardware. nomouse Disables mouse support. 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.
Adding Acronis Plug-in to WinPE 2.x or 3.0 ISO To add Acronis Plug-in to WinPE 2.x or 3.0 ISO: 1. When adding the plug-in to the existing Win PE ISO, unpack all files of your Win PE ISO to a separate folder on the hard disk. 2. Start the Bootable Media Builder either by selecting Tools > Create Bootable Media or, as a separate component. 3. Select Bootable media type: Windows PE. When creating a new PE ISO: Select Create Windows PE 2.x or 3.
system will be used. For bare metal, or if no Windows operating system is found, the disk layout will be used according to the bootable media environment (Linux-based or Windows PE). 3. The Linux-based bootable media shows local disks and volumes as unmounted (sda1, sda2...). 4. The log lifetime is limited to the current session. You can save the entire log or the filtered log entries to a file. 8.1.2.
echo iscsiadm parted sh egrep kill pccardctl sleep fdisk kpartx ping ssh fsck ln pktsetup sshd 8.2 zcat Acronis Recovery Expert Acronis Recovery Expert is an easy-to use tool that lets you recover volumes on a basic MBR disk that were accidentally deleted or damaged due a hardware or software failure.
4. Click Proceed to start recovering the volumes. Recovering volumes in manual mode The manual recovery mode lets you take full advantage of the volume recovery. You will be able to specify the searching method, disks to search on, and volumes to recover. 1. In the Recovery mode window, choose Manual. 2. In the Unallocated Space Selection window, select unallocated space on basic disks where the deleted volumes used to be located.
In this section Starting work with Acronis Disk Editor .................................................... 72 Main window, menu and controls ........................................................... 72 Editing disks ............................................................................................. 73 View.......................................................................................................... 74 Search ..........................................................................
The list of encodings is used to interpret the hard disk sector content. Selecting the necessary encoding, will allow you to view the sector's content correctly interpreted in the right part of program’s main window in the Hex mode. 8.3.3 Editing disks The Edit menu lets you access the main operations with blocks of given hard disk sectors. You can edit hard disk data directly in the fields of any view mode — see View (p. 74). Let us consider the disk editing in the As Hex view mode.
2. In the Write to file window, click Browse and specify the path and file name. 3. Click OK to save the file. Tip: You can create a selection right in the Write to file window: in the Size filed, specify the the number of bytes that will be selected from the current cursor position. Reading a block from a file Not available under Linux-based bootable media The Read from file menu item lets you read the block from a previously saved file and insert it into a disk sector. To read a block from a file 1. 2.
After the search process is finished, the current position will be moved to where a line was found, or will remain the same if no lines were found. You can search for the next line by pressing the F3 key. You can go to the necessary sector according to its absolute offset, by selecting the Go to menu item (or by pressing the Alt+P key combination). The transition is performed by entering an absolute sector offset, or by entering cylinder, head and sector numbers.
Step 2. Restoring MBR 1. Create a WinPE-based bootable media in order to be able to restore the system in case of failure. Bootable media is created with Acronis Bootable Media Builder as described in How to create bootable media (p. 64). 2. Boot the machine with the bootable media and run Acronis Disk Director. 3. Right-click the disk whose MBR you need to restore and then click Edit. 4. In Acronis Disk Editor press F2 key to switch to the Hex view mode. 5.
8.3.6.3 Wiping disk data Hard disks can contain a substantial amount of confidential information. Often users forget that private information must be completely destroyed to avoid unauthorized access to it. Simply deleting an old file is not sufficient. Windows tools do not guarantee data destruction. Deleted files can be restored easily. Formatting and even deleting a partition leaves hard disk sector contents the same.
and ends with something like: ...OLF... 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. Normally, when taking a picture the camera writes information about the manufacturer in every .jpeg file. This information is usually stored at the beginning of every file. Thus, by knowing how the file begins and ends plus having information about the manufacturer, we have enough information to distinguish our .jpeg files.
9 Working in the command-line mode Acronis Disk Director supports the command-line mode for the most important disk and volume operations with ADDCommandLine.exe utility. This utility is launched locally, i.e. on the machine where the Disk Director is installed. In this section Supported commands .............................................................................. 79 Usage examples ....................................................................................... 81 9.
Specifies the volume cluster size (in bytes). If not specified, the default value for the selected file system type is used. [/label:""] Specifies the volume label. The maximum length of a volume label depends on the volume’s file system. For example, it is 32 characters for the NTFS file system, 11 characters for the FAT16 and FAT32 file systems, and 16 characters for the ext2 and ext3 file systems. If not specified, the volume will have no label.
Options [/os:] Specifies the ID of the operating system layout under which the operation will be executed. If not specified, the operation is executed under the currently running operating system. /disks: Specifies the hard disk IDs, on which the operation will be executed (separated by commas). [/ps:""] Specifies the disk partitioning scheme — MBR or GPT. If not specified, the MBR partitioning scheme is used. [/type:""] Specifies the disk type — Dynamic or Basic.
10 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. 93). 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. 91) (on a basic disk) or a simple volume (p.
Block See Sector (p. 91). Boot sector The first sector (p. 91) of a disk (p. 84) or a volume (p. 93) 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. 93).
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. 87) 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. 87) 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. 87) tree. File system A data structure that is used to store and manage files (p. 86) on a volume. A file system tracks free and occupied space, supports folders (p. 87) 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. 93) on a disk. G GPT disk A disk whose partitioning scheme (p. 90) 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. 89). GUID partition table (GPT) One of the two partitioning schemes of a disk. See in Partitioning scheme (p. 90).
Logical volume A volume which is located on a basic MBR disk (p. 89) and is not a primary volume (p. 91). 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. 92) to mirrored is called adding a mirror. Mirrored volume A fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on two physical disks (p. 90). 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. 93) and a boot volume (p.
Physical disk A disk (p. 84) that is physically a separate device. Thus, floppy disks, hard disks and CD-ROMs are physical disks. Primary partition See Primary volume (p. 91). Primary volume A volume which is located on a portion of a basic disk (p. 82) 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.
S Sector The smallest information unit on a disk (p. 84) that is transferred in a single read or write operation. Usually, a sector is 512 bytes in size. Simple volume A volume (p. 93) that consists of disk space from a single dynamic disk (p. 85). Physically, a simple volume can occupy more than one region of disk space, which can be logically perceived as a single contiguous region. When you extend a simple volume to another disk, the volume becomes a spanned volume (p. 92).
Use of the swap files enables more programs to run than would otherwise be allowed by the memory limitations. The operating system unloads currently unneeded data to the swap file, and loads needed data from the swap file into memory. A swap file is also called a paging file. System folder A folder that contains files that are necessary for an operating system to work. Examples of system folders for Windows operating systems are “Program Files” and “Windows”.
A disk can store more than one volume. Some volumes, such as spanned volumes (p. 92), can reside on more than one disk. Volume label An optional name that can be assigned to a volume (p. 93) to simplify its identification by the user. The length of a volume label depends on the volume’s file system (p. 87). For example, the NTFS file system allows volume labels of up to 32 characters.
