When you break down a computer piece by piece, you notice just how well each and every part works together and see how important every single component is. Some of us may say that the power supply is the most important component as it maintains constant power, or that the processor is the most important due to its astonishing speed and performance. Yet in reality, what is really important is your hard drive.
With the heart of your computer being your hard drive, it not only reads and writes data, but also sends operating system commands to the rest of the computer indicating what the user wishes to do. Our hard drives also play another important role, that of personal data storage. Many of us do not create backups of our hard drive, but ask yourself how important is the data on your hard drive?
With the Hard Disk Manager 14 software, everyday essential tools to manage, backup, diagnose, and run performance tests on hard drives just became that much easier. Having support for hard drives and solid state drives on Windows XP and higher, the Hard Disk Manager is a premium tool that allows both an everyday user to backup their computer or a computer enthusiast to run either maintenance and/or optimization tests on a hard drive.
Today I will be doing a product overview of Paragon-Software’s Hard Disk Manager 14 Professional and be covering the following topics: the software & tools, features, and my overall thoughts. I would like to thank Paragon-Software for providing the software for this review.
Figure 1 – Hard Disk Manager 14 Suite and Professional product boxes.
The Software and Tools
Having access to both a suite and professional edition of the Hard Disk Manager, I decided to stick with using the professional copy for this review. I will say, however, that the Hard Disk Manager 14 Suite edition offers more than enough features for both the average home and an enthusiast user. If you wish to compare both professional and suite editions, then click here.
After you download and follow the on-screen installer for the software, you are presented with a user interface that looks similar to Microsoft Word.
Once installed and running, you are greeted with a disk map that clearly outlines all attached hard drives and their different partitions (figure 2). Without even looking at the top ribbon bar, there are quick selections for backups, burning CDs, restores, converting to GPT, undeleting partitions, wiping the hard drive/partition, and more.
As it may seem that a hard drive software would be more focused towards a computer enthusiast, I found that even never having used this type of software before, I found it to be easy to navigate and operate. The top ribbon bar is similar to Microsoft Word, separating different tools and functions. There are tabs for backup & restore, new backup formats, partitioning, copy & migration, archives, schedules, and volume explorer; all of which have useful tools corresponding to their sub tab.
Starting with the backup & restore, users have the option for smart backups, which take only necessary files like My Documents, Music, and Photos. Incremental backups are used to take incremental parts of a hard drive over time. Then there is the restore option to recover lost files from your backup. Users can also ask the software to check the archive integrity to ensure a safe backup is not corrupted.
Under the new backup format tab, you’ll find options to back up to a virtual drive which can be seen as a virtual disk backup for virtual machines. A virtual disk can be something that is portable yet large enough to store important files. Then on the partitioning tab, the functionality grows in that users have the ability to create, format, delete, and undelete partitions. Here I decided to use the partitioning tools to combine two partitions that I no longer wished to have. Everything performed smoothly, ending up with a large single partition.
Moving on to one of my more favorite features, the copy & migration tab provides features that can be very helpful for users that are transferring data or upgrading to a solid state drive. As we all know, getting a new computer or reinstalling Windows can take some time, but with the Hard Disk Manager, users have the ability to either copy an entire hard drive, partition or just the OS itself. This saves both the time and hassle of transferring data, wondering if you missed any important data as well. This feature also comes in handy if you decide to upgrade your hard drive to a solid state drive as you can migrate all data to a new drive.
Finally the last few tabs are focused towards the enthusiast, with archives being a backup log, scheduling for automated backups, and a more advanced volume explorer for searching and finding files on either an active hard drive or backup.
Figure 2 – The user interface.
Features
By now it is clear that the Hard Disk Manager is a useful tool that can do a whole lot in maintaining a hard drive, and it is very clear that its functionality of backups and a disk management are well up to par with other programs.So what could be left in terms of features?
Well, another favorite of mine was the secure wipe feature. With its secure wiping, users have the ability to safely wipe specific files, one single partition, or even the entire drive itself. This is all without worry of files being left behind as it has a two stage wiping algorithm to remove all data.
Following the secure wiping, there are the advanced recovery methods which can provide a full system recovery even if your operating system has failed! Using the recovery options allows users to have safe and bootable backup for people who cannot lose their data, and how many of us can say that our data is not important? Users can also boot the backup on a different computer using different hardware, however, I would be cautious about this action due to the mismatching drivers on the new system.
What does happen if your operating system crashes? How are you supposed to access the software in the first place? With the Hard Disk Manager 14 having an option DVD boot method, you can easily perform all the same tasks all without a working operating system. See figure 3 below.
To finish off this section are the complete backups. Users have the ability to both transfer data from a hard drive to a solid state drive, or just provide that safe feeling that all your data is safely stored away. For those that have extremely important information, you may wish to follow the three steps of back ups.
Yes, it can maintain, fix, or run performance tests on hard drives, but the backups that are created are some of the best I have seen and used. I used to use a free software for my personal backups, but at times I had to select what files to backup and the backups were unreadable in terms of what exactly was backed up. With the Hard Disk Manager it’s as easy as pressing a button.
Figure 3 – The software running via DVD.
My final thoughts
In the end I am happy with my test and usage of the Hard Disk Manager 14 Professional. At a $50 difference between the suite and professional, I will say that the suite should be suffice for the average home user and the professional targeted to, well, the professionals of hard drives. Although I did not have any other software to compare it with, I must say that the Hard Disk Manager did meet my expectations. As a TSF Hardware Team member its ease of use and numerous features give me confidence in recommending this package.
Buy it Now:
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3 Comments
“If you wish to compare both professional and suite editions, then click here.”
There is no link provided in the “click here” part.
Thanks for spotting this. Now fixed.
Strange. The link works for me.