Acronis Disk Director Advanced Workstation - 11.0 Operation Manual

Acronis® Disk Director® 11

Advanced Workstation

User's Guide

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Table of contents

1 Introducing Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Advanced ...................................................................6

2 Acronis Disk Director components ..........................................................................................7

2.1 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Management Console ....................................................... 7

2.2 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Agent for Windows ........................................................... 7

2.3 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Bootable Media Builder .................................................... 7

3 Installation and upgrade ........................................................................................................8

3.1 Before installation ..................................................................................................................... 8

3.1.1 System requirements ...................................................................................................................................... 8

3.1.2 Supported operating systems ........................................................................................................................ 8

3.1.3 Supported file systems .................................................................................................................................... 9

3.1.4 Supported media ............................................................................................................................................. 9

3.1.5 Licensing policy ................................................................................................................................................ 9

3.2 Installation ................................................................................................................................. 9

3.2.1 Where to install the components ................................................................................................................ 10

3.2.2 Installation procedure ................................................................................................................................... 10

3.2.3 Specifying credentials for Acronis services .................................................................................................. 10

3.3 Upgrading Acronis Disk Director ..............................................................................................11

3.3.1 Upgrading from demo to full product version ............................................................................................ 11

3.3.2 Upgrading from previous product versions ................................................................................................ 11

3.4 Uninstalling Acronis Disk Director ...........................................................................................12

3.5 Technical Support ....................................................................................................................13

4 Basic concepts ..................................................................................................................... 14

4.1 Basic and dynamic disks ...........................................................................................................14

4.2 Types of basic volumes ............................................................................................................15

4.3 Types of dynamic volumes ......................................................................................................15

4.4 Active, system, and boot volumes ...........................................................................................16

4.5 Dynamic volume types support ...............................................................................................17

4.6 Volume alignment in disks with a 4-KB sector size ..................................................................17

5 Getting started .................................................................................................................... 20

5.1 Precautions ..............................................................................................................................20

5.2 User privileges .........................................................................................................................20

5.3 Running Acronis Disk Director .................................................................................................20

5.4 Using the management console ..............................................................................................21

5.4.1 "Disk management" view ............................................................................................................................. 22

5.4.2 "Tasks" view ................................................................................................................................................... 26

5.4.3 "Log" view ...................................................................................................................................................... 28

5.4.4 Console options ............................................................................................................................................. 30

5.4.5 Machine options............................................................................................................................................ 31

5.4.6 Collecting system information ..................................................................................................................... 32

5.5 How to .....................................................................................................................................32

6 Volume operations .............................................................................................................. 34

6.1 Creating a volume ....................................................................................................................34

6.2 Resizing a volume ....................................................................................................................36

6.3 Copying a volume ....................................................................................................................37

6.4 Moving a volume .....................................................................................................................38

6.5 Merging basic volumes ............................................................................................................39

6.6 Formatting a volume ...............................................................................................................40

6.7 Deleting a volume ....................................................................................................................41

6.8 Splitting a volume ....................................................................................................................41

6.9 Changing a volume label ..........................................................................................................42

6.10 Changing a drive letter ............................................................................................................43

6.11 Converting a primary volume to logical ...................................................................................43

6.12 Converting a logical volume to primary ...................................................................................44

6.13 Changing a partition type ........................................................................................................44

6.14 Setting a volume active............................................................................................................45

6.15 Adding a mirror ........................................................................................................................45

6.16 Removing a mirror ...................................................................................................................46

6.17 Breaking a mirrored volume ....................................................................................................46

6.18 Browsing a volume's content...................................................................................................47

6.19 Checking a volume for errors...................................................................................................47

6.20 Defragmenting a volume .........................................................................................................48

6.21 Changing a cluster size .............................................................................................................48

6.22 Hiding a volume .......................................................................................................................49

6.23 Unhiding a volume ...................................................................................................................49

6.24 Changing a file system .............................................................................................................50

6.25 Specifying i-node density .........................................................................................................50

7 Disk operations .................................................................................................................... 52

7.1 Disk initialization ......................................................................................................................52

7.2 Basic disk cloning .....................................................................................................................53

7.3 Disk conversion: MBR to GPT ..................................................................................................54

7.4 Disk conversion: GPT to MBR ..................................................................................................55

7.5 Disk conversion: basic to dynamic ...........................................................................................56

7.6 Disk conversion: dynamic to basic ...........................................................................................56

7.7 Changing a disk status: online to offline ..................................................................................57

7.8 Changing a disk status: offline to online ..................................................................................58

7.9 Importing foreign disks ............................................................................................................58

7.10 Removing a missing disk ..........................................................................................................59

7.11 Cleaning up a disk ....................................................................................................................59

8 Tools ................................................................................................................................... 61

8.1 Acronis Bootable Media Builder ..............................................................................................61

8.1.1 How to create bootable media .................................................................................................................... 62

8.1.2 Working under bootable media ................................................................................................................... 66

8.2 Acronis Recovery Expert ..........................................................................................................68

8.3 Acronis Disk Editor ...................................................................................................................69

8.3.1 Starting work with Acronis Disk Editor ........................................................................................................ 70

8.3.2 Main window, menu and controls ............................................................................................................... 70

8.3.3 Editing disks ................................................................................................................................................... 70

8.3.4 View ................................................................................................................................................................ 72

8.3.5 Search ............................................................................................................................................................. 72

8.3.6 Usage examples ............................................................................................................................................. 73

9 Working in the command-line mode .................................................................................... 77

9.1 Supported commands .............................................................................................................77

9.2 Usage examples .......................................................................................................................79

10 Glossary .............................................................................................................................. 80

1 Introducing Acronis® Disk Director® 11

Advanced

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.

Key features

Acronis Disk Director offers many features including:

 New! Create both basic and dynamic volumes

The handy Create Volume wizard has been improved to support dynamic volumes creation. Now, in addition to basic volumes, you can easily create dynamic volumes in Acronis Disk Director to:

 Increase the volume size beyond the capacity of a single disk, by using a spanned volume  Reduce access time to files, by using a striped volume

 New! Add, remove, or break mirrored volumes*

Make your basic or simple volume fault-tolerant in just one action by adding a mirror. If you need extra unallocated space on a disk containing one of the mirrors—remove a mirror. Break a mirrored volume to get two independent simple volumes with initially identical content.

 New! Copy or move a volume of one type as a volume of another type

Change the type of a volume when copying or moving it. For example, you can copy the contents of a mirrored volume to a spanned volume.

 New! Convert primary volumes to logical and vice versa

Convert a primary volume to logical to create a fifth volume on a disk that currently has four primary volumes.

 New! Convert basic disks to dynamic and vice versa

Convert the existing basic disks to dynamic to achieve additional disk reliability for data storage.

 New! Convert GPT disks to MBR and vice versa

Change the partitioning scheme of your disk to the way you need it.

 New! Import foreign disks

Make dynamic disks added from another machine accessible for the system.

 New! Changing a disk status: online to offline and vice versa*

Change a disk status to offline in order to protect it from unintentional use.

 New! Disk cloning

The Disk Cloning wizard lets you replace the old basic MBR disk with a new one without reinstalling operating systems and applications. It transfers all of the source disk data to a target disk. The source disk volumes can be cloned to the target disk "as is", or resized automatically according to the target disk size.

 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  Format and label volumes, change file systems, clusters size, assign volume letters, and set

volumes active

 Delete volumes and clean up disks  Hide/unhide volumes  Specify i-node density  Initialize newly added hard disks  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.

 Acronis Bootable Media Builder

Now, you can create bootable media based both on WinPE and Linux to use Acronis Disk Director on bare metal or outside of an operating system.

 Acronis Disk Editor

A professional tool that performs a variety of actions on a hard disk.

 Log

Examine information about disk and volume operations, including reasons for failure, if any.

* For the operating systems that support such functionality.

2 Acronis Disk Director components

2.1 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. These operations can be performed either in the operating system or using bootable media.

2.3 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Bootable Media

Builder

The Bootable Media Builder is a dedicated tool for creating bootable media (p. 81). The media builder can create bootable media based on either Windows Preinstallation Environment, or Linux kernel.

3 Installation and upgrade

In this section

Before installation ...................................................................................... 8

Installation ................................................................................................. 9

Upgrading Acronis Disk Director .............................................................. 11

Uninstalling Acronis Disk Director ............................................................ 12

Technical Support .................................................................................... 13

Component

Memory (above the OS and running applications)

Disk space required during installation or update

Disk space occupied by the component(s)

Additional

Complete installation

300 MB

2 GB

1.01 GB

Agent for Windows

120 MB

500 MB

260 MB

BIOS-based*

Bootable Media Builder

80 MB

700 MB

350 MB

CD-RW or DVD-RW drive

Management Console

30 MB

700 MB

400 MB

Screen resolution 1024*768 pixels or higher

Media type

Memory

ISO image size

Based on Windows PE

512 MB

300 MB

Linux-based

256 MB

130 MB

This section answers questions that might arise before the product installation and guides you through the installation and upgrade of Acronis Disk Director.

3.1 Before installation

This section answers questions that might arise before the product installation.

3.1.1 System requirements

System requirements

* Machines that are based on Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) are not supported.

Bootable media

3.1.2 Supported operating systems

Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Agent for Windows

 Windows XP Home Editions/XP Professional SP2+  Windows XP Professional x64 Edition

 Windows Vista - all editions  Windows 7 - all 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 Vista - all editions  Windows 7 - all editions

3.1.3 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. 34), Resize (p. 36), Copy (p.

37), Move (p. 38), Merge (p. 39), Split (p. 41)—are not available for the XFS, Reiser4, HPFS and JFS file systems.

3.1.4 Supported media

 Hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD)  Support for IDE, SCSI and SATA interfaces  CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R (including double-layer DVD+R), DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, BD-R, BD-RE

for bootable media creation*

 USB 1.1 / 2.0 / 3.0, FireWire (IEEE-1394) hard disk drives  PC card storage devices

* Burned rewritable discs cannot be read in Linux without a kernel patch.

3.1.5 Licensing policy

Acronis Disk Director licensing is based on the number of Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Agents for Windows. One license key enables installation of agent on one machine. The license key is entered during the agent installation.

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. The console, which provides the GUI to the agents, should be installed on the machines from where the disk management operations have to be performed.

3.2.2 Installation procedure

Do the following to install Acronis Disk Director:

1. Log on as an administrator and start the setup program.

2. Click Install Acronis Disk Director.

3. Accept the terms of the license agreement.

4. Select the installation type:

 The Typical installation will install all Disk Director components.  The Custom installation lets you specify the components that you want to install.

5. Enter the license key. You need to enter the product license key at each agent installation.

6. Specify where to install the components. By default, the setup program will install components

to the C:\Program Files\Acronis\.

7. Specify credentials (p. 10) for the account under which the agent service will run. By default, the

setup program will create a dedicated user account for the service.

8. Confirm opening of the Microsoft Windows Firewall port.

Details. Acronis Disk Director uses TCP port 9876 for local installation and for communication between components. If you use a different firewall, make sure that the port is open for both incoming and outgoing requests through that firewall.

9. The summary window displays the list of components that will be installed on the machine. Click

Install to proceed with the installation.

10. After the installation, click Close to exit the setup program.

If you have several full licenses and need to install agents on other machines, repeat this procedure for each machine.

Note: When canceling the installation process, only the last package is removed. Other components, if any, remain installed.

3.2.3 Specifying credentials for Acronis services

Acronis Disk Director Agent runs as Windows service. When installing this component, you need to specify the account under which the agent's service will run.

You can either create a dedicated user account or specify the existing account of a local or domain user.

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, .\LocalUser or DomainName\DomainUser—make sure that the account is a member of the Administrators group,

before proceeding with the installation. The setup program will assign the above listed user rights to the account.

If the machine is part of an Active Directory domain, make sure that the domain's security policies do not prevent the account from having the above listed user rights.

Important: After the installation, do not specify a different user account for the agent service. Otherwise, the agent may stop working.

3.3 Upgrading Acronis Disk Director

This section describes how to upgrade Acronis Disk Director.

3.3.1 Upgrading from demo to full product version

The demo key required at installation can be obtained on the Acronis Web site.

The demo version of Acronis Disk Director is fully functional, except for the following limitations:

 All volume operations can be performed on volumes whose initial and resulting size is not larger

than 100 MB. Operations on volumes whose size is larger than 100 MB cannot be committed.

 The following disk operations can be committed only if the total size of all volumes on the disk is

not larger than 100 MB:

 MBR to GPT (p. 54) and vice versa (p. 55) disk conversion.  Basic to dynamic (p. 56) and vice versa (p. 56) disk conversion.  Clone basic disk (p. 53).  Clean up disk (p. 59).

To upgrade from the demo version to the full product, you do not need to re-download the software.

To upgrade from demo to full product version

1. Connect the console to the machine and click Help > Switch to full license.

2. Enter the full license key.

3.3.2 Upgrading from previous product versions

Preparation

If the languages of the two products are different, uninstall Acronis Disk Director 10 before installing Acronis Disk Director 11. Otherwise, the installation will fail.

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 Suite to Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Workstation

Before proceeding with the upgrade, make sure that:

 You have the license key for Acronis Disk Director 10 Suite.  You have a full or upgrade license key for Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Workstation.

The upgrade procedure

1. Log on as an administrator to the machine where Acronis Disk Director 10 Suite is installed.

2. Start the Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced setup program.

3. Click Install Acronis Disk Director.

4. For the upgrade license key: Specify the upgrade license key and the license key for Acronis Disk

Director 10 Suite. For the full license key: specify only the key for Acronis Disk Director 11 Workstation.

5. Follow the on-screen instructions as described in Installation procedure (p. 10).

Result: Acronis Disk Director 10 Suite is replaced with Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Workstation.

3.4 Uninstalling Acronis Disk Director

The uninstallation removes Acronis Disk Director 11 components from the machine. You can remove the components in using any of the following ways:

 From the Start menu. In this case, all the components of Acronis Disk Director will be uninstalled

at once.

 Acronis Disk Director setup program - lets you uninstall individual components.

To uninstall all components of Acronis Disk Director

1. Log on as an administrator to the machine, where Acronis Disk Director components are

installed.

2. Select Start -> All Programs -> Acronis -> Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced -> Uninstall Disk

Director 11 Advanced.

3. Click Remove.

4. Proceed with uninstallation.

Result: All the installed components of Acronis Disk Director will be removed from the machine.

To uninstall individual components of Acronis Disk Director

1. Log on as an administrator to the machine, where Acronis Disk Director components are

installed.

2. Start the Acronis Disk Director setup program.

3. Click Install Acronis Disk Director.

4. Click Modify.

5. Clear the check boxes next to the names of the components that you want to uninstall.

6. Proceed with uninstallation.

Result: The individual components of Acronis Disk Director will be removed from the machine.

3.5 Technical Support

Maintenance and Support Program

If you need assistance with your Acronis product, please go to http://www.acronis.com/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.com/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.com/content/8128).

4 Basic concepts

In this section

Basic and dynamic disks ........................................................................... 14

Types of basic volumes ............................................................................ 15

Types of dynamic volumes ....................................................................... 15

Active, system, and boot volumes ........................................................... 16

Dynamic volume types support ............................................................... 17

Volume alignment in disks with a 4-KB sector size .................................. 17

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.

4.1 Basic and dynamic disks

Each disk on your machine can be one of two types: basic or dynamic.

Basic disks

This is the type of disk that most computers originally have.

Basic disks can normally be used by any operating system, including any version of Windows.

A basic disk can store one or more volumes—called basic volumes. A basic volume cannot occupy more than one disk.

When to use basic disks:

 On a machine that has only one hard disk drive  On a machine that runs an older Windows operating system, or an operating system other than

Windows

By using Acronis Disk Director, you can convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk (p. 56).

Dynamic disks

These disks provide a greater functionality as compared to basic disks.

Dynamic disks can be used only by the Windows operating systems starting with Windows 2000.

A dynamic disk can store one or more volumes—called dynamic volumes. Unlike a basic volume, a dynamic volume can occupy more than one disk.

When to use dynamic disks. Dynamic disks are most effective if your machine has more than one hard disk drive. In this case, you can:

 Create a large volume that occupies several disks.  Add fault-tolerance to your system and data, by mirroring a volume—such as the one with the

operating system—to another disk. If a disk with one of these mirrors fails, no data will be lost on such volume.

By using Acronis Disk Director, you can convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk (p. 56). 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.

The main difference between a primary volume and a logical volume is that a primary volume can be used as the system or active volume—that is, a volume from which the machine or its Windows operating systems start.

On each basic GPT (p. 85) disk, you can create up to 128 primary volumes. The maximum volume size on a GPT disk is 16 exabytes.

Unlike basic GPT disks, on each basic MBR (p. 87) disk, you can create either up to four primary volumes, or up to three primary volumes plus an unlimited number of logical volumes. The maximum volume size on an MBR disk is 2 terabytes.

If you are not planning to use more than four volumes on the disk, all volumes can be primary volumes. Otherwise, you can leave the active volume and the system volume as primary volumes, and then create as many logical volumes as required.

If the disk already has four primary volumes and you need to create a fifth volume, first convert one of the volumes—but not the system or active volume—to a logical volume, as described in Converting a primary volume to logical (p. 43), and then create a new logical volume.

4.3 Types of dynamic volumes

The following are the types of dynamic volumes that are supported by Acronis Disk Director— provided that they are supported by the operating system, as shown in Dynamic volume types support (p. 17).

Simple volume

A volume (p. 91) that consists of disk space from a single dynamic disk (p. 83).

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. 89). When you add a mirror to a simple volume, the volume becomes a mirrored volume (p. 87).

Spanned volume

A volume that consists of disk space from two or more dynamic disks (p. 83), in portions that do not need to be equally-sized.

A spanned volume can reside on up to 32 disks.

Unlike mirrored (p. 87) and RAID-5 volumes, spanned volumes are not fault-tolerant. Unlike striped volumes (p. 90), spanned volumes do not provide faster data access.

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. 87), 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.

Mirrored volume

A fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on two physical disks (p. 88).

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. 90) and a boot volume (p. 81).

A mirrored volume is sometimes called a RAID-1 volume.

Note: No redundancy provided by the dynamic volumes architecture can replace the proper backup procedure. If you want to be sure of the safety of your data, the best policy is to combine both precautions.

4.4 Active, system, and boot volumes

Some volumes on the disks of your machine contain information that is necessary for the machine to start and for a particular operating system to run. Each such volume is called active, system, or boot, depending on its function.

If only one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, a single volume is often the active, system, and boot volume at the same time.

Because of their special role, you should use extra caution when performing operations with these volumes. Some operations with these volumes have limitations as compared to ordinary volumes.

Active volume

This is the volume from which the machine starts after you switch it on.

The active volume usually contains one of the following programs:

 The operating system  A program that enables you to choose which operating system to run (if more than one is

installed), such as GRUB

 A diagnostic or recovery tool that runs before the operating system, such as Acronis Startup

Recovery Manager

In Acronis Disk Director, the active volume is marked with a flag-like icon:

If you choose to run a Windows operating system, the start process continues from the volume known as the system volume.

System volume

Simple

Spanned

Striped

Mirrored

Windows XP Home

- - -

Windows XP Professional

+ + +

Windows XP Professional x64

+ + +

Windows Vista Home Basic

+ + +

Windows Vista Home Premium

+ + +

Windows Vista Business

+ + +

Windows Vista Ultimate

+ + +

Windows 7 Starter

+ + +

Windows 7 Home Premium

+ + +

Windows 7 Professional

+ + +

Windows 7 Ultimate

+ + +

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.

A boot volume contains folders such as the Program Files folder and the Windows folder.

Note: The notions of system volume and boot volume apply only to Windows operating systems.

4.5 Dynamic volume types support

The table below lists the operating systems that support certain dynamic volume types.

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. If the volume clusters are aligned with sectors, this volume and all following volumes are also aligned. If clusters are not aligned with sectors, the volumes are misaligned. Misalignment decreases the overall system performance and hardware lifetime.

When misalignment occurs

Volume misalignment occurs when you create a volume on a modern HDD or SSD drive that has a 4KB sector size using a Windows operating systems earlier than Vista.

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. Since the first track is reserved for the master boot record (MBR) and other service purposes, the first volume starts from the beginning of the second track of the disk. Therefore, volumes aligned by 63 sectors are not aligned with 4-KB sectors: 63 sectors by 512 bytes do not match with the integer number of 4-KB sectors.

Thus, the first created volume and all of the following volumes on the hard disk drive will be misaligned.

Why misalignment is an important issue for hard disk drives

When a single bit of data is changed, the operating system entirely overwrites the cluster that contains the changed data. But if misalignment occurs, the cluster will overlap more physical sectors than it would have occupied if aligned. As a result, more physical sectors need to be erased and rewritten each time data changes.

The redundant read/write operations noticeably slow down the disk speed and overall system performance.

The same is true for SSD drives that have a 4-KB or larger sector (memory page) size. For SSD drives misalignment decreases not only system performance, but also drive lifetime. SSD memory cells are designed for a certain amount of read/write operations. Therefore, redundant read/write operations lead to early degradation of the SSD drive.

How to avoid volume misalignment

The latest operating systems, starting from Windows Vista, already support the new sector size. Thus, volumes created with these operating systems will be properly aligned.

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. If you start creating volumes on this disk using Windows XP, you may experience some slowdown of the system performance while accessing the disk. To ensure proper volume alignment and normal access to volumes on this disk, perform the following steps:

1. Create a bootable media with Acronis Disk Director—see How to create bootable media (p. 62).

2. Run Acronis Disk Director from a bootable media—see Running Acronis Disk Director.

3. Select the Bootable media OS disk layout—see Disk layout (p. 24).

4. Create volumes—see Creating a volume (p. 34).

If Windows 7 or Windows Vista is installed in addition to Windows XP, select the disk layout of either of those operating systems.

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. 53). After cloning, Acronis Disk Director shifts the first volume start with 1MB offset, all the disk volumes will be aligned properly.

5 Getting started

In this section

Precautions .............................................................................................. 20

User privileges .......................................................................................... 20

Running Acronis Disk Director ................................................................. 20

Using the management console .............................................................. 21

How to ...................................................................................................... 32

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.

5.1 Precautions

To avoid any possible disk and volume structure damage or data loss, please take all necessary precautions and follow these simple rules:

1. Back up the disk whose volumes will be created or managed. Having your most important data

backed up to another hard disk or CD will allow you to work on disk volumes being reassured that your data is safe.

Acronis has an extremely effective comprehensive data backup and recovery solution — Acronis True Image. It creates a data or disk backup copy stored in a compressed archive file that can be restored in case of an accident.

2. Check volumes (p. 47) to make sure they are fully functional and do not contain any bad sectors

or file system errors.

3. Do not perform any disk/volume operations while running other software that has low-level disk

access. 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. If you cannot determine which applications use the disk/volume, close them all.

With these simple precautions, you will protect yourself against accidental data loss.

5.2 User privileges

In order to perform any operation using Acronis Disk Director, you must be logged on as a member of the Administrators group.

5.3 Running Acronis Disk Director

Running Acronis Disk Director in Windows

1. Start the management console by selecting it from the Start menu.

2. Connect the management console to the machine where the agent is installed.

3. In the Disk management view, examine the current layout of disks and volumes.

4. 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.

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.

Running Acronis Disk Director from a bootable media

Acronis Disk Director has a bootable version that can be run on a bare metal system, or on a crashed machine that cannot boot normally, or even on a non-Windows system, like Linux. A bootable version of Acronis Disk Director is created with Acronis Bootable Media Builder (p. 61).

To run Acronis Disk Director, boot the machine from a bootable media, and then select Acronis Disk Director.

While working under bootable media (p. 66), Acronis Disk Director can perform almost all the operations on any disks and volumes that can be performed under Windows.

5.4 Using the management console

As soon as the management console connects to a machine, the respective items appear across the console's workspace (in the menu, in the main area, the Navigation pane, the Actions and tools pane) enabling you to perform disk management operations.

The Disk management view

1. Navigation pane

Contains the Navigation tree and the Shortcuts bar.

The Navigation tree lets you navigate across the following product views:

 Disk management (p. 22)  Tasks (p. 26)  Log (p. 28)

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. If the console and agent are installed on the same machine, the shortcut to this machine will be

added to the shortcuts bar automatically as Local machine [Machine name].

2. Actions and tools pane

Provides quick access to the operations that can be performed on the selected disk or volume — see Volume operations (p. 34) and Disk operations (p. 52), and Acronis tools — see Tools (p. 61).

3. Main area

The main place of working, where you perform the disk management operations, view tasks and logs. Displays the different views depending on items selected in the Navigation tree.

4. Menu

Appears across the top of the program window and lets you perform all the operations, available on both panes. Menu items change dynamically.

5.4.1 "Disk management" view

Acronis Disk Director is controlled through the Disk management view of the console. The disk management view contains the toolbar, the table of disks and volumes, and the graphical panel.

Toolbar

The toolbar displays the current disk layout (p. 24) and lets you perform the following actions on pending operations: Commit (p. 23), Undo and Redo (p. 24).

Table

The table lists all the disks and their volumes and lets you select any of them to perform operations (p. 23).

You can sort volumes by columns. Click the column's header to sort the volumes in ascending order. Click it once again to sort the volumes in descending order.

If required, you can hide the shown columns and show the hidden ones. To do this, right-click any column and then click the items you want to be displayed/hidden.

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. Do any of the following:

 Click the disk or the volume, and then select the required action in the Disk management

menu.

 Click the disk or the volume, and then select the required action on the Actions and tools

pane.

 Right-click the disk or volume, and select the required action in the context menu.

Note: the list of available actions in the Disk management menu, the context menu and the Actions and tools pane depends on the selected volume or disk type. The same also applies to unallocated

space.

2. You will be forwarded to the operation specific window, or the wizard page, where you have to

specify the operation's settings.

3. Click OK. The operation will not be performed immediately, but will be considered pending (p.

23) and added to the pending operation list.

You can prepare a sequence of operations to be performed on disks and volumes. All pending operations will be performed only after you commit them.

Nevertheless, the results of any pending disk or volume operation are immediately displayed in the Disk management view. For example, if you create a volume, it will be immediately shown in the table at the top, as well as in the graphical panel at the bottom. Any volume changes, including changing the volume letter or label, are also displayed.

While an operation is pending it can be easily undone and redone—see Undoing pending operations (p. 24).

Pending operations

Almost all the operations are considered pending before you commit them. Until then, Acronis Disk Director will only demonstrate the new volume structure that will result from the operations, planned to be performed on disks and volumes.

This approach enables you to control all planned operations, double-check the intended changes, and, if necessary, undo operations before they are executed.

All pending operations are added to the pending operations list that can be viewed in the Pending operations window.

To view and commit pending operations

1. On the toolbar, click Commit pending operations.

2. In the Pending operations window, view and examine the list of pending operations.

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.

Undoing pending operations

Any pending operation can be undone or redone.

To undo the latest pending operation in the list

do any of the following:

 Click the Undo button on the toolbar  Press Ctrl + Z

Undoing an operation results in canceling one or more pending operations. While the list is populated, this action is available.

To redo the last pending operation that was undone

do any of the following:

 Click the Redo button on toolbar  Press Ctrl + Y

5.4.1.2 Disk layout

On a machine with two or more operating systems, representation of disks and volumes depends on which operating system is currently running.

A volume may have a different letter in different Windows operating systems. For example, volume E: might appear as D: or L: when you boot another Windows operating system installed on the same machine. It is also possible that this volume will have the same letter E: under any Windows operating system installed on the machine. Moreover, a dynamic disk created in one Windows operating system is considered as a Foreign Disk in another Windows operating system or might even be unsupported by this operating system.

When you need to perform a disk management operation on such machine, it is necessary to specify for which operating system the disk management operation will be performed, i.e. specify the disk layout.

The name of the currently selected operating system is shown on the toolbar after “Disk layout:”.

Click the operating system name to select another operating system in the Operating System Selection window.

Under bootable media, this window appears immediately after Acronis Disk Director is launched. The disk layout will be displayed according to the operating system you select.

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 disk statuses:

 Online

A basic or dynamic disk is accessible and functioning correctly. This is the normal disk status. You can change an online disk to offline—see Changing a disk status: online to offline (p. 57).

 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.

58).

 Foreign

This status occurs when you move a dynamic disk to your machine from another computer. To access data on foreign disks, you have to add these disks to your machine's system configuration—see Importing foreign disks (p. 58), or convert them to basic disks—see Disk conversion: dynamic to basic (p. 56).

 Missing

A dynamic disk is corrupted, powered down, or disconnected.

 Not Initialized

A disk does not contain a valid signature. After you install a new disk, the disk must be registered in the operating system—see Disk initialization (p. 52). Only then, you can create volumes on that disk.

To find out more information about disk statuses, please refer to the Disk status descriptions article on the Microsoft website.

Important! For instructions explaining how to repair disks with an Online (Errors), Offline, or Missing status, please refer to the Troubleshooting Disk Management article on the Microsoft website.

Volume statuses

Check a volume status to make sure the volume is accessible and works without problems. Volume statuses appear both in the table and graphical panel.

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

View a task's log

Click View log.

The Log view will display a list of the log entries related to the selected task.

View details of a task

Click View details. In the Tasks details window, examine all information related to the selected task.

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. 16) section.

The healthy volume whose file system is corrupted is marked with the following icon:

 Failed

A dynamic volume (striped, or spanned) cannot be started automatically, or one of the underlying disks is missing.

 Failed Redundancy

The data on a mirrored volume is no longer fault tolerant because one of the dynamic disks is not online. You can access the volume until the remaining dynamic disk is online. To avoid data loss, we recommend you to repair the volume as soon as possible.

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.

5.4.2 "Tasks" view

The Tasks view lets you monitor the currently running operation progress and examine operations existing on the machine.

To find out what an operation is currently doing on a machine, check the task execution state (p. 27). The status (p. 28) of a task helps you to estimate whether the operation is successfully accomplished.

To learn more about task states and statuses, see the Task states (p. 27) and Task statuses (p. 28) sections.

Way of working with tasks

 Use the filtering and sorting capabilities to display the desired tasks in the table.  Select a task to take an action on it.

Actions on tasks

The following is a guideline for you to perform operations with tasks.

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.

The management console will update the list of tasks existing on the machine with the most recent information. The data may not be retrieved immediately from the managed machine due to some latency. Manual refresh guarantees that the most recent data is displayed.

Filtering and sorting tasks

Sort tasks by column

Click the column's header to sort the tasks in ascending order.

Click it once again to sort the tasks in descending order.

Filter tasks by name, or owner.

Type the task's name (owner name) in the field below the corresponding column header.

As a result you will see the list of tasks, whose names (owner names) fully or just partly coincide with the entered value.

Filter tasks by execution state, status, last result.

In a field below the corresponding header, select the required value from the list.

Use the filtering and sorting capabilities to display the desired tasks in the table.

The following is a guideline for you to filter and sort tasks.

Configuring tasks table

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 menu items that are ticked off

correspond to the column headers presented in the table.

2. Click the items you want to be displayed/hidden.

5.4.2.1 Task states

A task can be in one of the following states: Idle, Running, Need interaction, Stopping.

Idle. The initial task state.

Running. Once the operation is committed the task enters either the Running state.

Need interaction. Any running task can put itself into the Need interaction state when it needs human interaction such as changing media or ignoring a read error. The next state may be Stopping

(if the user chooses to stop the task) or Running (on selecting Ignore/Retry or another action, such as

Status

How it is determined

How to handle

Error

Last result is "Failed"

Identify the failed task -> Check the task log to find out the reason of the failure and then remove the reason > [optionally] Create another disk management operation.

Warning

Last result is "Succeeded with warning"

View the log to read the warnings -> [optionally] Perform actions to prevent the future warnings or failure.

Last result is "Succeeded", "-", or "Stopped"

No action is required.

The "-" state means that the task has never been started or has been started, but has not finished yet and so its result is not available.

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.

5.4.3 "Log" view

The Log stores the history of operations performed on the machine using Acronis Disk Director. For instance, when you create a new volume, the respective entry is added to the log. With the log, you 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.

Way of working with the log

 Use filters to display the desired log entries. You can also hide the unneeded columns and show

the hidden ones. See the Filtering and sorting log entries (p. 29) section for details.

 In the log table, select the log entry (or log entries) to take action on it—see Actions on log

entries (p. 28).

 Use the Information panel to review detailed information on the selected log entry. The panel is

collapsed by default. To expand the panel, click the chevron. The content of the panel is also duplicated in the Log entry details window.

5.4.3.1 Actions on log entries

The following is a guideline for you to perform actions on log entries.

All the operations described below are performed by clicking the corresponding items on the log toolbar.

+ 64 hidden pages

Acronis Disk Director Advanced Workstation - 11.0 Operation Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

2 Acronis Disk Director components

3 Installation and upgrade

3.1 Before installation

3.1.1 System requirements

3.1.2 Supported operating systems

3.1.3 Supported file systems

3.1.4 Supported media

3.1.5 Licensing policy

3.2 Installation

3.2.1 Where to install the components

3.2.2 Installation procedure

3.2.3 Specifying credentials for Acronis services

3.3 Upgrading Acronis Disk Director

3.3.1 Upgrading from demo to full product version

3.3.2 Upgrading from previous product versions

3.4 Uninstalling Acronis Disk Director

3.5 Technical Support

4 Basic concepts

4.1 Basic and dynamic disks

4.2 Types of basic volumes

4.3 Types of dynamic volumes

4.4 Active, system, and boot volumes

4.5 Dynamic volume types support

4.6 Volume alignment in disks with a 4-KB sector size

5 Getting started

5.1 Precautions

5.2 User privileges

5.3 Running Acronis Disk Director

5.4 Using the management console

5.4.1 "Disk management" view

5.4.1.1 Performing operations

Pending operations

Undoing pending operations

5.4.1.2 Disk layout

5.4.1.3 Disk and volume information

Disk statuses

Volume statuses

5.4.2 "Tasks" view

5.4.2.1 Task states

5.4.2.2 Task statuses

5.4.3 "Log" view

5.4.3.1 Actions on log entries