The safest way to manage your data and hard drives Acronis Disk Director 12.5 Home delivers a set of powerful tools that work together to optimize your disk usage and protect your data. You can store different file systems or operating systems on one disk by creating and managing disk partitions. Acronis Disk Director is optimum for everyone who needs a professional disk management tool. It will be of great help for you whether you need to quickly split a partition without damaging your data, or you are looking for a professional tool to boot your crashed machine so you can repair the disk. Homepage: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/ Product page: https://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/disk-manager/ Download link: https://dl.acronis.com/u/AcronisDiskDirector12.5_trial_en-US.exe Size: 304.57 Mb Current version: 12.5 Highlights: Disk Cloning: Easily migrate your data, operating system and applications from an old basic MBR disk to a replacement disk. Volume Recovery: Quickly recover lost or deleted data partitions, even in cases when your operating system fails to boot. Partition Management: Safely create, customize, and organize partitions and your hard drive’s structure without losing data. System Requirements Supported operating systems: Windows 10 (Home, Pro, Education, Enterprise, and IoT Enterprise editions), Windows 8/8.1 (all editions (x86, x64), except for the Windows RT editions), Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP Professional SP3 (x86, x64) Recommended hardware requirements: Computer processor: 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor System memory: 512 MB or more Screen resolution: 1024x768 or higher CD / DVD recording drive, or a flash drive for bootable media creation Minimum hardware requirements Boot firmware: Bios-based, UEFI-based Computer processor: modern processor, 800 MHz or faster System memory: 256 MB Screen resolution: 800x600 pixels Installation disk space: 150 MB Other: Mouse Supported file systems FAT16 FAT32 NTFS Ext2 Ext3 Reiser3 Linux SWAP Languages supported: English, German, Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, Dutch, Polish, Czech Download and installation: You can download the installer on the official website. Installation is very easy and in a few steps you will have the program working on your computer. During installation you can submit your license key or skip it to use the demo version Free Trial: You can download a demo version. The demo version has the following limitations: While all operations can be performed on volumes whose initial and resulting size is not larger than 10 GB, operations cannot be done on volumes whose size is larger than 10 GB. There is no time limit for trials of Acronis Disk Director 12.5 Home. Once you purchase the full product, you will not need to reinstall it. Purchase: The program license is available on the official website for a price of 49.99$. This allows you to use the program lifetime with updates to the same major version Activation: After purchase the license key will be sent to your email address. Now launch the program , help menu then change license key and activate online. Menus: Key features 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 the source disk data to a target disk. The source disk volumes can be cloned to the target disk "as is", or resized automatically with respect to the target disk size. You can do this operation very easy using either the windows app or bootable media if you have problems with your PC. Using Acronis Disk Director 12.5 you can clone only basic MBR disks. GPT disks cannot be cloned. Remember that you cannot clone a single partition, only cloning of an entire disk is possible. It is recommended not to format the source hard disk after cloning until you are sure that the cloned target disk boots fine. All you need to do is to right click the source disc and select clone basic disc then specify the target disc and select the cloning method either as is or resize options. Finally start. For step by step cloning, please visit here: https://kb.acronis.com/content/47030 Acronis Recovery Expert Helps you to recover accidentally lost or deleted volumes on basic MBR disks. Disk Partition Recovery is a very useful feature that will defend your data by protecting it against hardware or software failures, virus attacks, or destruction by intrusive hackers. Every copy of Acronis Disk Director 12.5 comes with Acronis Recovery Expert built-in, so you can easily recover lost or deleted disk partitions. Acronis Bootable Media Builder Create either WinPE or Linux bootable media so you can start your machine from a CD/DVD or USB stick. By launching with boot media, you can use Acronis Disk Director either on bare metal or outside of the operating system (OS). You’ll be able to partition your machine before the OS is installed, ensure that the OS and applications are not interfering with disk management operations, and conduct advanced troubleshooting and recoveries if the OS fails to start. The process is very easy. Simply, launch bootable media builder through Tools menu or the main window button on the left sided bar. Next, you need to select whether to create Linux-based media or WinPE-based media. If you select winPE you need Windows AIK to be available on your computer. Finally select the image format you want (mostly .ISO image) and start. That’s all! If you want more information about Linux based media, visit this web page: https://kb.acronis.com/content/61953 Acronis Disk Editor A professional tool that performs a variety of actions on a hard disk. You can restore boot records, repair files and folder structure, find lost clusters, remove computer virus code from a disk and much more Using this tool, you can edit your disk drive content on a low level to recover missing information – whether it was accidentally deleted, lost via software or hardware failure, or destroyed by malware. You can back up and restore critical hard drive sectors, edit, and organize the contents of hard disk sectors - all with one solution. Working with Acronis Disk Editor requires a thorough understanding of the hard disk structure, file systems, operating systems, partitioning schemes and principles of data storage organization. If you are not experienced enough and this tool is misused, you can easily violate a disk’s information integrity by making data inaccessible. You need to be careful. With the editor tool started, click View to see information about the volume and the disk. For more details and examples of use, please visit here: https://kb.acronis.com/content/15051 Partition Management Mapping hard drives and creating partitions are made easy, allowing you to do more in less time. Format, label and make your partitions active in one easy step reducing time spent and risk of errors and data loss. Disk and volume management operations Create, convert, copy, move and delete volumes Resize, move, copy, split and merge volumes without data loss or destruction Format and label volumes, assign volume letters, and set volumes active Initialize newly added hard disks Delete volumes Change file systems Clean up disks Hide/unhide volumes Specify i-node density Change a cluster size 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 Create and repair RAID-5 volumes Change Partition Size: Merge Volumes: 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 Achieve fault tolerance, by using a mirrored volume 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. 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. 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. Convert basic disks to dynamic and vice versa Convert the existing basic disks to dynamic to achieve additional disk reliability for data storage. Convert GPT disks to MBR and vice versa Change the partitioning scheme of your disk the way you need it. Import foreign disks Make dynamic disks added from another machine accessible for the system. Changing a disk status: online to offline and vice versa Change a disk status to offline in order to protect it from unintentional use. Log Examine information about disk and volume operations, including reasons for failure, if any. What's new in Acronis Disk Director 12.5 Extended hardware support Support for 4k native hard disks, Updated Linux kernel version in its bootable media delivering greater support of most modern hardware Acronis True Image 2019 compatibility Rest easy knowing your data is safe. You can operate both products on the same machine, using the same Linux-based bootable media, to back up the volumes that you create and manage. The same Acronis Disk Director 12.5 product now supports the server and non-server operating systems. Support for Windows Server 2016. The maximum size of a volume that Acronis Disk Director can manage in the Demo (trial) mode is increased from 100 MB to 10 GB. Support for latest Windows ADK versions for WinPE media: ADK 1703, 1803, 1809 Detailed FEATURES and uses: Manipulate: Manage your data, whether you are splitting, re-sizing, converting or merging volumes. Create, convert and copy files and volumes as needed. Partition: Create partitions more quickly and easily. One easy step formats, labels and activates partitions, reducing the time spent and the risk of errors. Format: Make complex operations easily and efficiently through an intuitive user interface. Format your drive with the correct file system, whether FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, Ext2, Ext3, Reiser3, Linux, SWAP. Recover: Recover volumes that were accidentally deleted, damaged by hardware failure, or affected by a malware attack – all through a single, easy-to-use solution. Clone: Migrate everything on one disk – from the OS to apps to system preferences – to a replacement disk in mere minutes. This operation is available for basic MBR disks. Install: Boost your processing power by splitting an existing volume into two and installing an operating system on the second one to create another processing volume. Convert: Adapt your system to meet new and changing requirements in mere moments. Converting disks from basic to dynamic, or vice versa, is fast and easy. Span: Maximize the use of your disk space by creating a single, logical volume from the unallocated space across multiple physical disks. Supports up to 32 disks. Access: Benefit from the direct byte access and editing capabilities of the Acronis Disk Editor when modifying your disk. Boot: Create bootable media so you can launch your system from a CD/DVD or USB drive, even when the disk has no OS installed. Includes support for the Windows 10 Preinstallation Environment. Manage: Browse detailed information about all hard disks, partitions, and files systems, hide or make visible any partition type, and preview changes before applying them. Check for errors and bad sectors and try to fix Optimize: Get the most out of your system by examining and automatically optimizing the use of hard disk space. Defragmentation of the selected volume or partition: Hide /Unhide: You can hide a volume from the operating system. You can only hide and unhide volumes on basic MBR disks. After hiding, the operating system will not be able to detect the volume. The hidden volume loses its letter and this letter becomes free for assignment. How to Use the Program? If you want to perform any operation, you will go through any of the following steps; the first method includes simple click the disk or the volume, and then select the required action in the Actions menu. The second way lets you click the disk or the volume, and then select the required action on the Actions pane. The last method is right click the disk or volume, and select the required action in the context menu. Conclusion: Acronis disk Director 12.5 is a comprehensive disk management software with a powerful collection of tools that lets you optimize your disk usage and protect your data. You can perform many operations according to your needs, for example disk cloning, edit, split, volume recovery and many other tools. The current update offers an extended hardware support (support for 4k native hard disks and updated Linux kernel version in its bootable media) delivering greater support of most modern hardware and compatible with Acronis True Image 2019. This will keep your data safe with back up volumes that you create and manage.