Hard Disk Manager 2009 Special Edition Review

Hard Disk Manager 2009 Special Edition is a software program for the Windows operating system to manage hard drives. This includes options to back, partition, clone, wipe and defrag hard drives plus system management and system recovery options. The special edition seems to offer the same features that the Hard Disk Manager 2009 Suite offers except for the missing WinPE Recovery CD option, upgrades and technical support.

The suite is offered for a price of $49.95 which includes a free upgrade to Hard Disk Manager 2010 once it is released.

Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2009 Special Edition starts up with a wizard that makes it more comfortable to find and access the specific functions of the program.

The wizard divides the functions in a left sidebar that is divided into the buttons Backup and Restore, Maintenance, Rescue and Recovery, Wiping and Advanced Options.

The right side of the window displays the options that are provided by the selected category.

• Backup and Restore: Backup system/date, Backup files, Restore system/date, Restore files
• Maintenance: Hard Disk Optimization (defragmentation), Hard Disk Migration (migrate data to a new hard disk)
• Rescue and Recovery: Restore system/date from a backup image, Transfer Files from any file system and burn them to DVD, Burn Rescue Kit to create a bootable recovery CD
• Wiping: Disk Wiper to securely erase data on a hard drive so that the data cannot be recovered.
• Advanced Options: Advanced partitioning and hard disk management, Manage Backup Capsule to manage secure storage for backup images)

Backup and Restore

Backup and restore are one of the main features of Hard Disk Manager 2009. The program can be used to backup and restore partitions, hard drives or files and folders. A backup wizard will be displayed automatically after selecting one of the backup options.

One interesting option is the ability to backup the master boot records of the hard drives. The wizard will automatically display the size of the selected objects and the estimated archive size. The backup module will automatically compress the data to save disk space.

Advanced users can access backup settings where they can modify many aspects of the backup. This includes the compression level, splitting backup images, password protection, enable hard drive or partition raw processing which will perform a sector to sector copy, enable or disable hot processing and excluding files and folders from the backup.

The backup can be saved to a local or network drive or burned to CD or DVD. There is unfortunately no option to add servers as an option. Remote server backups are therefor only possible indirectly by saving the backups to a local hard drive first and then transferring those backups to the remote server.

Installation:

Hard Disk Manager 2009 Special Edition is provided as a 159 Megabyte zip file that extracts into a setup file and a readme. The setup.exe when executed will extract HDM2009Special_ea.exe to a location on the hard drive from where the hard drive manager can be installed.

A Get Free Serial button will be displayed during installation which needs to be clicked. This leads to a Paragon website with a form to request a product key and serial number. This product key and serial number will be send to the email account entered in the registration form.

The installation can only be completed after this steps as the product key and serial number need to be entered into the installation window. A restart is required at the end of the installation.

Verdict:

Hard Disk Manager 2009 Special Edition lacks several tools that one would expect from a hard disk manager. This includes for instance support for S.M.A.R.T., displaying hard drive temperatures and health levels or checking a hard drive’s performance. Even the professional version of Hard Disk Manager 2009 does not support this.

The features that are offered by the software program can aid a user although most can be substituted with free software as well.

Positive:

• Easy to use
• Rescue CD
• Combines lots of tools in one program making them more accessible
• 32-bit and 64-bit support

Negative:

• Huge file size
• No HDD Health or performance benchmarking
• No server backups
• Most tools can be replaced by free tools that do the job as well

Hard Disk Manager 2009 Special Edition is available for free today at the Giveaway of the Day website. The program needs to be installed today to register it correctly. The product page at the developer’s website can be accessed here.

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Author: Martin Brinkmann, Wednesday February 3, 2010 -
Tags:gotd, Hard Disk Manager, Hard Disk Manager 2009, hard disk manager review, windows software