Acronis PowerUtilities User’s Guide Copyright © Acronis, Inc.
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Table of Contents CHAPTER 1. ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES ....................................................... 5 1.1 ABOUT ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES ................................................. 5 1.2 ABOUT THE ACRONIS POWERUTILITIES USER’S GUIDE ................. 6 1.3 SOFTWARE USAGE CONDITIONS ..................................................... 7 1.4 TECHNICAL SUPPORT ...................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 2.
.9 MANUAL UPGRADE ....................................................................... 35 CHAPTER 5. HARD DISK ERROR CORRECTION ........................................... 36 5.1 BEGINNING TO WORK WITH THE PROGRAM ACRONIS DISKEDITOR36 5.2 MAIN WINDOW OF THE PROGRAM ................................................ 37 5.3 WORKING IN MULT-IWINDOWS MODE .......................................... 38 5.4 EDIT HARD DISKS.......................................................................... 40 5.
Chapter 1. Acronis PowerUtilities 1.1 About Acronis PowerUtilities Acronis PowerUtilities, the long-anticipated utilities suite from the technology leader Acronis, includes four of the most popular system utilities available in one box: • Acronis PrivacyExpert, the powerful privacy utility computing and surfing history completely private. • Acronis MigrateEasy, the preeminent hard disk drive migration tool available today.
automatically. It will even show you a preview of the migration can be completely assured of file and system transfer. Within minutes, your data, including applications and operating systems, will be safely on your new large hard disk drive and ready to go! Hard Disk Problem? Not Any More Quite often problems can arise with hard disk drives that cannot be solved without a technically advanced disk editor.
data, operating with sector byte blocks, browsing and editing the Master Boot Record and boot sectors, File Allocation Table; 1.3 • Chapter 6 «Disk Data Wiping» - working with Acronis DriveCleanser: guaranteed wiping of confidential data on an obsolete or unused disk, data wiping algorithms; • Appendix A. «Hard Disk Wiping Algorithms» - the necessity of strict hard disk data wiping algorithms and the detailed description of algorithms integrated into Acronis PrivacyExpert and Acronis DriveCleanser.
Chapter 2. Installing and Starting to Work with Acronis PowerUtilities 2.1 Acronis PowerUtilities System Package Acronis PowerUtilities system package includes: 2.2 • an installation disc, • this guide, • license agreement, • registration card, • advertising materials. Hardware and Software Requirements To take a full advantage of Acronis PowerUtilities one should have: 2.
component has already been installed to your PC and prompt you to recover (update) or completely remove it from the disk. In the component installation wizard select Recover/update Acronis and click Next. All necessary files will be copied to your hard disk again to properly restore software. 2.5 Removing Acronis PowerUtilities Components To remove a component select Acronis Æ Æ Remove from the Programs menu.
Chapter 3. Cleaning User Activity Traces From a Computer Clean-up of user PC activity traces is performed by Acronis PrivacyExpert, a part of Acronis PowerUtilities suite. Acronis PrivacyExpert is controlled from the main window. It is shown on the screen after selecting Acronis Æ PrivacyExpert Æ PrivacyExpert from the Programs menu.
3.1.1 Complex PC Clean-up In the One Click Clean-up section, shown by default in the right part of the Acronis PrivacyExpert main window, the user has access to icons of three pre-defined complex PC clean-up. If you need to perform: 1. entire PC clean-up, including Windows system section and sections related to working on the Internet, execute Entire PC Clean-up; 2. clean-up of sections related to working on the Internet only, execute Internet Clean-up; 3.
3.2 Executing PC Clean-up Manually There are three ways of manually executing complex PC and component clean-up. PC or separate component clean-up, previously selected from the right part of the Acronis PrivacyExpert main window, can be executed by: 1. mouse-clicking Start Now! in the Acronis PrivacyExpert main window sidebar; 2. selecting Clean-up Æ Start Now! from the main menu; 3. selecting Start Now! from the task context menu.
• System Clean-up – this group includes Windows system section and user files/folders clean-up. If you need to set up component clean-up: 1. select the component from the left part of the editor and check the Enable box; The description of a component to clean 2. set component clean-up; for this consecutively select each component clean-up setting or set-up as necessary (selecting/entering clean-up algorithm, file type, Internet browser, etc.); «Files» setting 3.
If you need to restore Acronis PrivacyExpert default clean-up settings: 1. select the component tree root – Settings; 2. in the right part of the editor click Restore Defaults . Restoring Acronis PrivacyExpert default settings 3.4 Separate Components Clean-up Settings Having selected a specific component to clean from the editor, you open the list of its clean-up settings. Each component to clean has several settings in Acronis PrivacyExpert (from 1 to 3 depending on a component).
If you have Internet Explorer installed, the structures cleaned belong to the currently logged on user. «Internet Browsers» setting Netscape Navigator and Mozilla support the so-called personal profiles. Without additional settings Acronis PrivacyExpert cleans either the «default profile» (if it is the only one existing), or the profile of a currently logged on user. If you need to clean-up only one browser: 1.
If you need to: 1. clean-up Internet cache (last visited pages list) from all files (lists, elements), downloaded from specific Internet address (site), enter addresses or their parts separated by semicolon, for example like: *cnn*;*formula1* As a result all files downloaded from www.cnn.com, www.formula1.com will be deleted. 2. clean-up Internet cache from only specific file types downloaded from specific Internet address (site), enter addresses separated by semicolon, for example like: *cnn*.jpg;*cnn*.
Having mouse-clicked a setting name, you will see its available element in the right part of the editor – the selection of data destruction algorithms. Selecting a data destruction algorithm Mouse-clicking the drop-down list in the right part of the editor, you will see all data destruction algorithms available in Acronis PrivacyExpert. If you need to ensure: 1.
• read*.* – to delete all files with any extensions, and names beginning with «read»; • read?.* – to delete all files having 5-letter names and any extensions, names beginning with «read», the fifth letter is random. For example, the last search string will result in removal of read1.txt, ready.doc files, but readyness.txt will remain since it has a longer pre-fix name (excluding the extension). You can enter several different search strings separated by semicolon, for example: *.bak; *.tmp; *.
If you need to: 1. delete only specific file types from the Recycle Bin (system or user folder), enter filenames separated by semicolon, for example, as follows: *.jpg; *.gif; 2. delete only specific filenames from the Recycle Bin (system or user folder), enter names, for example, as follows: read*.txt. This will result in removal of read!.txt, readme.txt, read1.txt, etc. files, while read.doc, readme.doc, etc. will remain. 3.
As a result all computer search strings will be deleted from the registry. «Computers» setting On entering «Computers» setting value you can browse the search strings kept in the registry selected by Acronis PrivacyExpert. To do this click Show Computers . You will see the window with full and partial computer names searched for in the network. They will be deleted at the registry clean-up. 3.
3.5.1 Invoking the Scheduler Having mouse-clicked a cleanup variant in the right part of the Acronis PrivacyExpert main window, and selected Schedule in the sidebar Clean-up list, you invoke the scheduler. You can also do this by selecting a clean-up variant and Clean-up Æ Schedule from the main menu. Finally, you can invoke the scheduler from the clean-up variant context menu-selecting Schedule. Scheduler 3.5.
5. in all of the above click Next and set additional execution settings on the 2nd scheduler page. If you need automatic PC clean-up: 1. at PC start-up, set the switch on the 1st scheduler page to When my computer starts; 2. at shutdown, the switch on the 1st scheduler page to When my computer shuts down. If you need to disable automatic scheduled execution: 1. invoke the scheduler again; 2. on the 1st scheduler page set the switch to Disable scheduled clean-up. 3.
(3) American: NAVSO P-5239-26 (MFM), (4) German: VSITR, (5) Russian: Russian Standard, GOST P50739-95. Besides algorithms that meet national standards, Acronis PrivacyExpert provides two far more powerful pre-defined algorithms offered by top information security specialists: (6) Peter Gutmann’s algorithm; (7) Bruce Schneier’s algorithm.
7. clean the last visited pages and last used documents list; 8. delete the evidence of searching for files on connected disks, for networked computers, for information on the Internet; 9. clean Internet cache; 10. delete cookies 11. delete downloaded components; 12. clean Internet history and last visited pages list. Entire PC clean-up is executed by a mouse-click on its name in the right part of the main window (for other execution methods see sections 3.2, 3.5). 3.8.
3.9 A Fast Cleanup of Separate System Components Acronis PrivacyExpert enables you to perform a fast clean-up of separate system components. For example, you can clean just the Last Visited Pages or cookies. A separate component is cleaned faster than a complex PC clean-up. Separate component clean-up is performed from Internet Components and System Components sections (see 3.1.2 «Cleaning Separate System Components»).
Chapter 4. Migrating Data to a New Hard Disk You can migrate your data from the old hard disk to a new one with the help of Acronis MigrateEasy, a part or the Acronis PowerUtilities suite. 4.1 Preparing for Migration To use the Acronis MigrateEasy application effectively you have to know at least the basics of hard disks and how the computer works with them. Below we will provide only the most necessary information, without covering the technical details of inner structure of hard disks.
Acronis MigrateEasy works only with hard disks and the partitions contained on them. This means that: 1. You will never see files, nor folders while working with MigrateEasy, but only hard disks, their partitions, and the properties of both (disk numbers, letters, capacities and sizes, etc); 2. When moving all your data to a new disk, MigrateEasy works not with files and folders, but with more basic disk structure elements.
After the new disk is configured in BIOS, save the settings. For more details about BIOS set-up and possible errors (including error messages) see the Guide Appendix in the .pdf file on the installation CD-ROM. 4.5 Starting Work with Acronis MigrateEasy To start a migration process under Windows, select Start Æ Programs Æ Acronis Æ MigrateEasy Æ Acronis MigrateEasy.
4.6 Migration Scenarios Before starting the program, you have to know for sure, what you can expect from it. Below we describe the details of each of possible work scenarios. Here we will list only the main scenarios and their outcomes. 4.6.1 Auto Upgrade The results of auto upgrade scenario are as follows: 1. An exact copy of the source disk is created on the destination disk.
If you decide to transfer partitions to the new disk and delete them from the old one, you can repartition the old disk to use it for some other purposes. Transferring partitions «as is» means that for each partition of the old disk an exact copy is created on the new disk, i.e. the type, size, file system, and label of the partition remain the same.
Then you must specify which disk the data is transferred from. Select source hard disk Markings on this page help you to understand which disk should be the source and which the destination one (check for disk numbers, volume labels, partitions and file systems on disks). In the lower part of the window you see the graphical representation (as rectangles of various sizes) of the partitions of the selected hard disk, and also the unallocated space.
If only two disks are installed in your computer, you are able to select only the second disk. Select destination hard disk On the next step the program checks if the destination disk is free. If it is not free, the program notifies you about it. You get to the Nonempty destination disk page. It means that the destination disk contains some partitions, and at least some of them may contain data.
In this case you should: 1. press the Back button and select another destination disk on the Select destination disk page; 2. allow the program to delete the existing partitions from the disk by checking the Delete partitions on the destination disk checkbox. The Hard disk drives structure page showing the partitions of the source disk before transfer and of the destination disk after transfer appears.
The text of the created scenario is shown on the next page. Final upgrade scenario This is the last page of the Wizard, next the scenario will be executed. So far the program has not performed any actions and has only created the upgrade scenario. Please notice that the Next button of the Wizard is now called Proceed. If you are not sure that you have entered the correct upgrade parameters, it is time to stop and think if everything has been done correctly.
Automatic transfer mode is completely safe for data on the old hard disk (source disk), since in this mode the program does nothing with it except for reading data (the disk is not repartitioned, the partitions are not resized).
Chapter 5. Hard Disk Error Correction Hard disk error correction can be performed with Acronis DiskEditor, a part of the Acronis PowerUtilities suite. Acronis DiskEditor assumes user’s relatively high qualification and knowledge of hard disk logical structures and data storage methods. Thus this chapter only describes its interface and functionality. 5.
5.2 Main Window of the Program The main window, showing numbers of disk and sector where the internal program cursor is positioned, usually contains information and the working of various modes. Below the main window of the program is the view as Partition table mode. The main window in the view as Partition table mode To make the information contained in this field sensible, the current sector should be the MBR or the extended Partition table.
The current editing position is shown by the cursor that can be either in the left, or right part of the window. In this section of the Guide all examples of Acronis DiskEditor’s main window view modes are given for demonstration purposes. The main menu of Acronis DiskEditor contains the following items: 5.
You can switch between various Acronis DiskEditor windows with the help of the mouse, clicking the necessary window, or consistently advancing windows with the help of Alt+Tab key combination. Acronis DiskEditor as a multiwindow editor Selecting Properties item in Disk menu allows you to get access to the window with main properties of the computer hard disk selected for working (or of selected partition of the given disk).
5.4 • Total size – hard disk capacity, • Interface – interface type (ATA, SCSI), • Controller – controller type. Edit Hard Disks Edit menu of Acronis DiskEditor’s main window allows you to 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 the View menu). You can operate with data blocks using Edit menu in the view as Hex mode.
Simply changing data in the hexadecimal or character area, in the view as Hex mode of the main window or in any fields of other view modes, does not lead to changes in the given disk sector. Having performed such changes, you will see that the Save sector item in Edit menu will become enabled as well as the appropriate toolbar button. Save sector operation This feature allows you to save the results of your sector editing or to reject it.
5.5 Write Block to a file and Read From a File Write to file… and Read from file… menu items allow you to save the selected block to a file or to read the block from a file and save it to a disk sector. The selection of Write to file… item results in opening the Write to file window (the saved block should be preliminary selected). In this window enter the file name and its path, or locate a file by clicking the Browse… button. The file size will be calculated automatically.
In this window enter the file name and its path or locate a file by clicking the Browse… button. To insert file contents to sector from the current cursor position (or considering offset in the file) click the OK button. Read from a file window 5.6 View Information in the Acronis DiskEditor window can be viewed and edited in several different modes. You can select the appropriate view mode with the help of View menu.
5.7 • As FAT32 FS info sector, • As NTFS boot sector, • As FAT folder. Search Search menu allows you to search a hard disk for some line and to go to a disk sector according to its absolute offset. Search Menu Selecting Search item in the same menu will give you access to functions of searching lines in the disk being edited. (You can do the same by pressing Ctrl+F key combination.) Search parameters can be set in the Search dialog window.
You can go to the necessary sector according to its absolute offset by selecting the Go to… line the Search menu (or by pressing Alt+P key combination). Selecting this line opens the Go to… dialog window. Go to sector… The transition is performed by entering absolute sector offset, or cylinder, head, and sector numbers.
5.9 Other Acronis DiskEditor Capabilities The description of other Acronis DiskEditor capabilities, in particular, main window view modes for working with MBR, FAT, files, folders and subfolders are provided in the .pdf file on the installation CD-ROM.
Chapter 6. Disk Data Wiping Getting rid of an old PC, upgrading to a new hard drive, returning a leased computer, or redeploying a PC within your company? It is truly imperative to completely destroy all data from the old hard disk. Acronis DriveCleanser guarantees the complete destruction of data on selected partitions and/or entire disks with extremely simple Windows XPstyle interface and straightforward actions. 6.
The following real-life passage illustrations this idea: Jack V., a computer consultant from Brighton, bought a used notebook computer for $400.00 at the clearance sale of a bankrupt Internet company. It was clear that the hard disk drive contained data about the company. This data included social security numbers and salary levels of the company’s forty-six employees, plus pay roll records, strategic company plans, confidential board of directors minutes, and other internal documents.
6.1.3 Guaranteed Destruction of Confidential Information: Standards The Acronis DriveCleanser application offers the guaranteed destruction of confidential information on magnetic hard disks with the help of special algorithms. Acronis DriveCleanser algorithms guarantee compliance with most known national standards: (1) American: U.S. Standard, DoD 5220.22-M; (2) American: NAVSO P-5239-26 (RLL); (3) American: NAVSO P-5239-26 (MFM); (4) German: VSITR; (5) Russian: GOST P50739-95.
6.2 Working with Acronis DriveCleanser Software Working with Acronis DriveCleanser starts with the welcome screen. The screen informs you about the basic features of the software; they are: 1. Wiping selected partitions of a hard disk (disks) with one of the predefined wiping algorithms; 2. Creating and using custom wiping algorithms. The Acronis DriveCleanser welcome window All actions on hard disks are performed on the basis of scripts created during the dialogue with the user.
The following window will contain the list of hard disks connected to your computer, and their partitions with main parameters (disk capacities and partition sizes, file systems and labels). The list of computer's hard disks (with partitions) Next you will need to select the partitions on hard disks to be designated for data destruction. Mouse-click the rectangle representing the hard disk partition. The red cross will appear in the top right corner of the rectangle.
In the Post-wiping actions window you may choose what to do with partition that is the subject of data destruction. Acronis DriveCleanser offers you three opportunities: • Leave partition as is – that is just to destroy data according to the algorithm which you will select later; • Delete partition – to destroy data and remove partition; • Format – to destroy data and format partition (default).
You need to select one of the pre-defined wiping algorithms from the list in the Algorithm selection window. The list of pre-defined wiping algorithms The next window represents the created script for wiping the hard disk partitions. The window of the hard disk wiping script The Acronis DriveCleanser software is now ready to perform the wiping procedure. Click the Proceed button to execute the script for wiping the hard disk partitions.
After pressing Proceed DriveCleanser takes care of everything automatically. To complete the execution of all processes, Acronis DriveCleanser will reboot your system after you have pressed the Proceed button. Upon completion of the data destruction execution, you will receive a message reporting the successful completion of the disk wiping procedure.
6.2.1 Results of the Wiping Script Execution Acronis DriveCleanser software gives you another method to review the results of partition and/or hard disk wiping. Acronis DriveCleanser has a builtin DiskViewer utility for viewing the hard disk contents. The algorithms described above offer different variants for data destruction. Thus, the picture you may see on a partition and/or a disk depends on the selected data destruction algorithm.
6.3 Creating Custom Algorithms Data wiping algorithms integrated into Acronis DriveCleanser are suitable for most users from the point of reliability and performance. Nevertheless, Acronis DriveCleanser enables user to create and save custom algorithms. To create a custom hard disk wiping algorithm, select and mouse-click the «Custom…» item from the drop-down list of the Algorithm selection window. Selecting the custom algorithm creation Follow the instructions of Custom algorithm creation wizard.
Appendix A. Hard Disk Wiping Algorithms Information removed from a hard disk drive by non-secure means (for example, by simple Windows delete) can easily be recovered. Utilizing specialized equipment, one may also be able to recover even repeatedly overwritten information. Therefore the problem of guaranteed data wiping is vital as never before. The guaranteed wiping of information from magnetic media (e.g.
decision, in general, but still acceptable in simple situations. The most effective information wiping algorithm based on deep analysis of subtle features of recording data to all types of hard disks. This knowledge speaks to the necessity of complex multipass algorithms to guarantee information wiping. The detailed theory of guaranteed information wiping is described in an article of Peter Gutmann, please see: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html. A.
NN Algorithm (writing method) Russian: GOST P50739-95 Passes 1 5. Logical zeros (0x00 numbers) to each byte of each sector for 6th to 4th security level systems. Randomly selected symbols (numbers) to each byte of each sector for 3rd to 1st security level systems. P. Gutmann’s algorithm 35 Peter Gutmann’s algorithm is very sophisticated. It’s based on his theory of hard disk information wiping (see http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/ ~pgut001/pubs/secure_del.html). B.
