Partition Manager 8.5

To begin with, let us examine the current situation of the available disk space. We look at the properties of our disks or peculiarities of existing backup images. The program provides some helpful tools for this purpose.

Viewing Disk Properties

The user is able to view in-depth information on the properties of hard disks. The main tools to extract this information are the Disk Map and the List of Partitions. The two represent the actual state of the computer’s hard disks.

Generally the hard disks are represented on the map by rectangular bars, which also contain small-sized bars. The small-sized bars represent logical disks (partitions). When the user selects a large-sized bar, the Explorer bar displays information about the disk in a bright, graphical form.



The model and serial number In the DOS partitioning scheme, every hard disk and every partition has a Serial Number, which consists of 32 bits and is represented by an 8-figure hexadecimal value. The hard disk's Serial Number is stored in the MBR. Its value is assigned when the MBR sector is initialized by standard disk managing tools from Microsoft, such as Windows Disk Administrator and FDISK utility. In fact, the hard disk's Serial Number is not important for most operating systems and software. It is known that Windows NT, 2000 and XP store hard disks' Serial Number values in the database of assigned drive letters. A partition's Serial Number is stored in its Boot Sector (in FAT16, FAT32 and NFTS file systems). Its value is assigned when the partition is formatted. In fact, the partition's Serial Number does not play an important role for most operating systems and software. of the disk serve as the title of the browsed page. The disk layout is shown in form of a circular graph, where the color of a sector corresponds to a file system of an appropriate partition. On the right the user may see a table, which contains the following information:

   Type of hard disk (basic or dynamic),

   Total size (in GB),

   Information on geometry of the disk (amount of sectors per track, heads and cylinders).

Below there is a list of wizards available for the user. If the user clicks a corresponding record the appropriate wizard will be started. All default values for the operation parameters will correspond to the disk’s settings. The list of wizards contains a detailed description of tasks that can be performed by the wizard. This nullifies the possibility of selecting the wrong wizard.



When the user selects a small-sized bar (i.e. corresponding to a logical disk), the Explorer bar will display information on it as well. The page title will contain a drive letter, which is assigned to the disk. The disk layout graph will be colored in accordance with the volume ratio of the used space to the free space (the light colored sector). The table on the right will contain the following information:

   Volume label (if available),

   Type of the logical disk,

   File system (represented by the color of the graph and the selected bar),

   Total size, used space and free space (in GB or MB).

Below there is a list of wizards, which may be called for this disk. All default values of parameters will correspond to the disk settings. 

Viewing Image Properties

Before restoring a disk from an image it is necessary to be sure that it is the image you need. To obtain general information about an image you can use the Restore wizard. It is very convenient to use because it provides the possibility to cancel the operation at any step.

There are several ways to launch the Restore Wizard:

   In the Main menu: select Wizards > Restore Disk or Partition…

   In Common Tasks bar: click the Restore item of the Wizards menu

At first, the wizard displays the Welcome page – simply click the Next button at the foot of the dialog window.



The next page refers to Browse for Archive. Here you can select an image on your disk in the browser-like window. The section below (i.e. Archive File Details) displays a short description of the selected image, including:

   information on a type of the archive contents (whether it contains the entire disk or just a partition),

   whether the archive is compressed or not,

   whether the archive is password protected or not,

   the date, when the archive was created.

The next page (i.e. What to restore) displays detailed information about the contents of the archive. It includes a full description of properties about the archived disks or partitions.

If you want to restore the contents of the image click the Next button. In order to cancel, click the Cancel button.
 

Viewing Image Contents

The user may browse the contents of the archives with a special utility called Volume Explorer. To launch the Volume Explorer the user should click the appropriate tab in the Explorer Bar.



In order to view contents of an archive, open it by double click of the left mouse button.

Volume Explorer also provides the possibility to extract separate files and folders from archives without restoring the whole archive.

Volume Explorer can work with any kinds of archives created by the program. For example, it can browse the Backup Capsule which is hidden from any standard Windows program.