DD11 missing MANY previous essential features! 1) Buyers Beware 2) Acronis needs to LISTEN
There are some postings that decry the lack of essential features previously available in Disk Director 10, now removed from the DD11 "upgrade" (such as Wiping partitions, Hiding/Unhiding partitions, etc.) and now I find yet another major feature for using DD, and the reason I bought this "upgrade," has been purposely left out:
I just purchased DD11 Home upgrade having used Disk Director Suite version 10 for years. I thought DD11 would be BETTER because I need to use it on Windows 7 and need to work with partitions (including upgrades to SSD drives) and this work involves needing to see and adjust the partition start and end points (It's important, especially when cloning to SSD drives, that the partitions are correctly aligned, starting at 2048 bytes rather than the Windows XP 'default' of 63 bytes.) This is a huge ongoing issue in the True Image forums because Acronis has still not incorporated partition alignment options into the software.
So, with this in mind, Disk Director 11 is supposed to be able to handle cloning with more "awareness"
I quote Acronis employee Sergey Sergeev, posting #19 at: http://forum.acronis.com/forum/3823
- " Acronis Disk Director 11 will be detecting the operating system in use and use its default partition alignment for operations with partitions. This means that, irrelevant of the type of the drives in use, it will automatically align partitions properly in an SSD-friendly fashion for Windows Vista/Windows 7 systems (it will use the default Windows Vista alignment of sector 2048 for Windows 7) while Windows XP will still align towards sector 63. That's not much of an issue for Acronis Disk Director though because you can modify those offsets easily using the basic functionality of this program."
I have just installed DD11 on Windows 7, and wanting to check partition information on drives, I went to add the appropriate columns to view (for any who don't know, you can right-click the column headers themselves and get the columns available to view. Acronis has REMOVED more than HALF of the available information! Compare:
| Disk Director 10 - Can display 19 different information columns: | Disk Director 11 - can display only 8 items of information: | |
| Partition Path (mount point) Flags Letter Label Capacity Free Space Free Space (%) Used Space Used Space (%) Type Type (number) Number Start End Win95 Original Letter Win95OSR2/98/N/ME Letter WinNT4/2000/XP Number Linux Number |
Volume Capacity Free Space Used Space Type File system Status Start |
DD11 provides practically less information than native Windows Disk Management! This situation is deplorable. (Regardless of the Win95 references that might be old enough to remove in this release.) This "upgrade" version of Disk Director is becoming useless for our purposes. I haven't even gone through to see what OTHER features they chose to leave out. Let's not forget that "beginners / amateur computer users" do not use disk partitioning programs like this. I think it's safe to say that almost ALL of us users are already in the "advanced category". To create the next version of the software and leave out half of the features of the previous version, features that users RELIED on, is absurd. If they planned to release an "Advanced" version, that is the version that should have come out first.
I still maintain that in the case of disk drive and partition management and manipulation, ALL activity is already "advanced" so there should not be a "dumbed down" version of Disk Director. It smacks of a company focusing on revenue generation brainstorming over customer needs or satisfaction. If Acronis continues this focus, more and more previously loyal customers will depart.
I have tried to ignore the increasingly loud voices of dissatisfaction with Acronis on these forums, not only for this product, but other products, especially TrueImage. I am now seeing for myself that the cries of paying customers in the forums are not only genuine, but JUSTIFIED. I urge Acronis' top management to reconsider the direction they are taking their company. I am one more customer, now, that is looking for alternatives to Acronis for my Drive management and imaging needs, and I am more than willing to pay for a better software when I find it elsewhere.
Howard,
The OSS situation is even worse. I've just switched to another boot manager, and was able to set the whole thing up in 5 mins. What a concept! ;-)
I agree with you that DD11 is a complete waste of time. I've left it installed, as DD10 won't install on Windows 7 (64 bit anyway) - but I'll use DD10 from my boot CD for any "serious" work.
It smacks of a company focusing on revenue generation brainstorming over customer needs or satisfaction. If Acronis continues this focus, more and more previously loyal customers will depart.
--
Yes, and perhaps even more critically, the unreliability of DD-11's bootable PE inclusions smacks of a company abandoning its "compute with confidence" first principles. Looks very much to me as if some tricky inhibitors intended to disable "unauthorized" usage (and also connected with the revenue issue, of course) have now taken precedence. The result (unintended consequence?) is that usage has become totally impossible under certain disaster conditions where reliability is most essential.
As a long-time loyal user, my own "compute with confidence" in Acronis is badly shaken. It'll take one heck of a lot of convincing to persuade me to try the next TI and/or DD "upgrades" after this fiasco.
One more missing feature: change cluster size.
This was a unique feature which I could not find at any competitor. Now it's missing.
As long as Windows XP will be suported I can have Disk Director 10 there.
I've never used the Acronis OSS because I got bad experience years ago and take care to keep it swiched off.
I'm satisfied with the Windows Boot Manager because I've no other OS than Windows.
On a positive note, they added True Image's disk cloning feature to Disk Director, and that had been the only reason I used True Image.
The absence of the Hide Partition feature is the reason why I did not and will not purchase Disk Director 11 Home.
I am waiting to see whether the "Advanced" version, which some claims are in development, will add back the missing features and also support the Vista/7 partitioning rules.
In the mean time, I agree with the OP that we need to look for viable alternatives whether or not Disk Director 11 "Advanced" does live up to its promise, or whether there is actually an "Advanced" version at all.
Hide partition and change cluster size is in the Advanced version.
As far as 4K sector boundaries are concerned the same as for DD11 - if XP is on the same disk as W7 or Vista then it will work with 512 byte 63 sector offset. If the system is already 4K/2048 offset then it will use these.
If you boot from the rescue CD you can create 4K partitions on 63 sector disks.
DD11 is a real disappointment. I don't want to pay more for an advanced edition that won't do any more than DD10 did. I'm only sorry now I didn't look more carefully at what I was buying.
Acronis lists me as having "You have 8 registered products." I have been a loyal customer, and am only using two of these products currently. Now they are becoming less functional than in the past.
I will be more careful about my purchases in the future.
Hide partition and change cluster size is in the Advanced version.
As far as 4K sector boundaries are concerned the same as for DD11 - if XP is on the same disk as W7 or Vista then it will work with 512 byte 63 sector offset. If the system is already 4K/2048 offset then it will use these.
If you boot from the rescue CD you can create 4K partitions on 63 sector disks.
How can you be sure? Have you seen the "Advanced" version yourself? I won't believe it until I see it myself.
Anyway, I totally agree with the OP that partition operations are inherentlly "Advanced" and therefore a dumb-down version should never have been released by Acronis. This Home version is for one purpose only : that of revenue generation. If Acronis does not change this practice I will never pay for another Acronis product again.
Have you seen the "Advanced" version yourself?
Yes.
I think that "Hide partition" IS effectively in DD 11 build 216. AFAIK "hiding" a partition is just a matter of changing the partition type byte in the partition table, isn't it? So to hide, say, an NTFS partition, you just need to use the "Change partition type" command, & change the ID from 07h to 017h (the DD dialog lists a large number of ID byte types, including those for hiding). Or in fact I think you can just change the byte to anything bizarre, e.g. "0B8h BSDI BSD/386 swap partition", & it hides it just as well. At least I think that's all there is to hiding partitions, but I might be wrong. So although it would be minimally easier if there were still a simple "Hide partition" command that automatically flipped whatever the partition ID was to the "approved" hidden version of it, I wouldn't think it's a major issue.
Also, regarding sector editing: I've found that there is a read-only version of the old DD 10 sector editor in TI 2010 & TI 2011. Including the ability to show sectors as hex, partition table, or NTFS or FAT boot sectors. And the rather nifty way of starting at the partition table view, then clicking on "Enter" to browse into a partition, including entering the "root" of a logical volume, then again into a partition in that. I've often found that useful to unravel things that have gone adrift; whereas I can't say I've often found a need to actually edit the disk through this (which admittedly you can't do now). It took me a long time to discover this tool in TI 2010, as it's rather oddly presented as a link at the bottom of the entry for the File Shredder utility, & seems to be part of that - I can't remember what it's titled - when you click the link you get a DD-like disk map. Which leads you to try right-clicking partitions, & nothing happens. If you left-click a partition, though, you get the sector reader tool. In TI 2011 it's more obviously named "View current state of your disks" as a separate item (although I think that on the boot disk - the PE version, at any rate - it still appears as an addendum to the file shredder).
So I find that a PE 3.0 boot disk with DD 11 + ATI 2011 (& also including - though poorly advertised - the a43 file explorer) does covers most of my needs. And at least DD 11 can be safely used with Windows 7, which DD 10 most certainly CAN'T, despite some postings suggesting that it can. (See my posting in "9949: Uninstall Disk Director 10 from Win 7" @ http://forum.acronis.com/forum/9949)
Simon,
You are correct about the disk hiding, though there is a post here somewhere about a problem that doing this can cause. It might be to do with OSS, though I can't recall at this moment.
Instead of let customers to be guinea pig to test/experiment their software, Acronis should hire a team of qualified beta tester to test their next release of software properly before release to the market. If some function not working properly please don't bother release it.
I wish I read this forum before purchasing DD11. I had a problem with my seagate 3tb drive and I thought it would be easier to use DD11 rather that W7 disk management. Funny because I formatted the disk succesfully in W7 but DD11 says not formatted... I could have done without spending my money on DD11 as these attached screen copies illustrates... Believe me they are the same disk J: Acronis says its not formatted but W7 says correctly it is formatted... So have I wasted my money you think??
Hamzah,
Have you just purchased DD11? If you have and you are still in the 30 days free support timeframe, I suggest raising a support ticket.
I'm wondering if the size of the drive is the problem. As an experiment would you be able to turn the drive back to an MBR drive and see if that makes any difference as far as DD11 is concerned. Or, format the drive with DD11 and report back on either count.
I have an external GPT drive which is seen fine by version of the Disk Director suite but it is only 250GB in size.
What about the mysterious DD1 Advanced?
What about the mysterious DD1 Advanced?
I think it's going through a final testing stage.
Hamzah,
Have you just purchased DD11? If you have and you are still in the 30 days free support timeframe, I suggest raising a support ticket.
I'm wondering if the size of the drive is the problem. As an experiment would you be able to turn the drive back to an MBR drive and see if that makes any difference as far as DD11 is concerned. Or, format the drive with DD11 and report back on either count.
I have an external GPT drive which is seen fine by version of the Disk Director suite but it is only 250GB in size.
I have just purchased DD11, and only registered it a week ago...
I think the problem is both the size and probably the drive. The Seagate goflex contains a single 3TB drive and I think Seagate uses some means to make windows recognise 3TB. Even if I partition this drive into two using DD11, it gives the same error message as attached when I try to format it. I attach two screen dumps, one after convering back to MBR... that's even more intriguing.
I have no problem using DD11 it on a maxtor 1TB external drive though.
I will raise a support ticket.
Thanks for your reply...
Cheers
Hamzah
Jusr one suggestion.
It would be wise to give your C:\ partition a label as you have done I:\ (your music one), as if you need to use the recovery CD at any time Linux is liable to report your c:\ partition as E:\ or similar, whereas the labels never change.
Well DD11 Advanced is now out, and while it does support many of the advanced features that used to be in DD10 home, they left out OSS!!
What a fiasco!!
OSS was never intended to be in any version of DD11, it was a last minute addition due to end user requests.
I believe that Acronis considered the corporate version (Advanced DD) to not require OSS as many corporate environments would run virtual machines rather than multi systems on one disk.
I believe also that OSS should not be included in the Advanced version. I tried it some time before and it simply did not work for me. And now I take particular care not to use and activate this OSS crap.
If you need a boot manager, I believe there are others available that work better and are easy to use.
I believe Acronis should simply drop OSS if they have no plans to improve it.
However, I will wait until others try out Disk Director 11 Advanced before deciding whether it will be worth the money.
DD11 Advanced is out as business version, no private version available? A compare shows only few differences. Diskeditor needs "Acronis Disk Director 11 Home Update 1 erforderlich". What does that mean?
Manfred,
I can only guess that might mean Acronis are going to reinstate the editor into the home version via a new build. It's just as possible though that the chart is in error.
I can only suggest 'wait and see' *shrug* .
Sounds like a waste of time to me. I agree that they should drop OSS as it *is* crap. I'm not sure DD is particularly worth it either...