OSS and GPT disks
DD11 can work with GPT disks but apparently OSS cannot. Is this a known limitation of OSS ? When I added a GPT disk, OSS output the error "W000101F9: Detected unsupported hard disk drives."
I doubt OSS will ever be updated to support GPT disks. You should be able to select the option to not have that error message displayed (otherwise, it will come up at every boot and wait for a response).
That is sad. DD11 aupports GPT disks fully but OSS does not support them at all. This means that modern systems which can boot from GPT disks cannot use OSS at all. These systems, with modern BIOSs, will become more prevalent and OSS will then become worthless to those users unless they retain backlward compatibility by using MBR disks on their boot drive.
Acronis is supposed to lead the way instead of holding back progress in disk booting/manipulation software. It is clear that GPT is an advance ovee the limitations of MBR disks.
Feel free to contact Acronis directly with your request (you could also send a PM to one of the moderators). The more they get the more likely they'll be to update OSS. Keep in mind that Acronis originally removed OSS from DD 11 and only put it back after customer protests. It was updated only slightly after that. Their view seems to be that most people use VM's now and multi-booting isn't really necessary. That's correct to a point (a lot of people use VM's more now), but there's nothing like having an OS physically on a system, whether it's for work, testing, or playing.
Feel free to contact Acronis directly with your request (you could also send a PM to one of the moderators). The more they get the more likely they'll be to update OSS. Keep in mind that Acronis originally removed OSS from DD 11 and only put it back after customer protests. It was updated only slightly after that. Their view seems to be that most people use VM's now and multi-booting isn't really necessary. That's correct to a point (a lot of people use VM's more now), but there's nothing like having an OS physically on a system, whether it's for work, testing, or playing.
Their idea that most people use VMs for running multiple OSs sounds wrong to me, but maybe I am behind the times. I have always distrusted VMs a bit, but most importantly I have never found the need to run multiple OSs at the same time. But I will now look more closely at VMs. Maybe the latest VM technologies for microcomputers work pretty flawlessly.
It does seem strange that they have invested in the technology of dealing with GPT drives in their main products but did not add that ability to OSS. How hard really can that be when they understand GPT and no doubt have software libraries/components to manipulate them ? Of course if they are no longer interested in OSS, or do not see it as a selling item for DD, that would explain things.
BTW, out of curiosity, it does not seem that there is a way of hiding partitions on GPT drives like one can do for MBR drives. Did I miss something here or am I right about that ? I like the idea that I can hide partitions on an MBR drive so that when multi-booting a partular OS only sees those partitions as usable which I do not have hidden.
VM's are great for lots of things. I often have two or three running to help with work and testing. However, it can't yet replicate a real physical machine and certainly doesn't help with testing hardware issues. Some areas can be quite a bit slower too (graphics, USB, burning, etc.).
OSS has not been really updated since 2005, which is when I first bought DD specially to get OSS.
As far as I know, you can't hide partitions on GPT disks. I'm not sure yet how multi-booting will be worked out for the new format. I assume something will be figured out even if it's not offical.