A
Andrew Hamilton
I'm looking for a boot manager that allows me to have multiples OS
partitions on my C drive, but with the inactive partitions hidden, and
an easy way to select the OS to boot when you turn on your system. I'm
willing to spend some money to get a reliable and solid product.
"Free" isn't as important as "works as advertised."
In early 2008 I bought System Commander 9, but never installed it.
Finally this weekend I installed it so I could have multiple OS's
installed, including Win XP, Windows 7 RC, a "scratch and experiment"
Windows, and maybe even Linux someday. But I wanted to have each
install go into its own partition for a clean install, and I wanted
the inactive OS partitions to be hidden, so as not to get tripped up
by Windows' drive naming conventions or any other nonsense.
That was the promise of System Commander, but the reality is that it
has a poorly designed, confusing interface. And, it doesn't even do a
good job of enabling you to do clean installs of Windows in more than
one partition. Waste of money.
The company no longer sells this product, and I'm not surprised. At
this point, I would never touch anything else made by this company,
Avanquest. Of course, I can't get my money back because I bought
this over a year ago.
A google search came up with Acronis Disk Director 10 and several
other products. Disk Director 10 sounds like it would do everything I
need, but then I read the reviews on Amazon. All over the place! Some
people love the product, others absolutely hated it. I also checked
out the reviews at newgg, and they weren't as bad as on amazon, but
there were enough people who also hated the product. After my
experience with System Commander, I'm a bit more cautious now.
The problem with user reviews is that you have no way to know if the
person writing the review knows what they are talking about, and boot
management is certainly not for newbies.
If you do use Acronis Disk Director, do you also use Drive Image Home?
Why?
-AH
partitions on my C drive, but with the inactive partitions hidden, and
an easy way to select the OS to boot when you turn on your system. I'm
willing to spend some money to get a reliable and solid product.
"Free" isn't as important as "works as advertised."
In early 2008 I bought System Commander 9, but never installed it.
Finally this weekend I installed it so I could have multiple OS's
installed, including Win XP, Windows 7 RC, a "scratch and experiment"
Windows, and maybe even Linux someday. But I wanted to have each
install go into its own partition for a clean install, and I wanted
the inactive OS partitions to be hidden, so as not to get tripped up
by Windows' drive naming conventions or any other nonsense.
That was the promise of System Commander, but the reality is that it
has a poorly designed, confusing interface. And, it doesn't even do a
good job of enabling you to do clean installs of Windows in more than
one partition. Waste of money.
The company no longer sells this product, and I'm not surprised. At
this point, I would never touch anything else made by this company,
Avanquest. Of course, I can't get my money back because I bought
this over a year ago.
A google search came up with Acronis Disk Director 10 and several
other products. Disk Director 10 sounds like it would do everything I
need, but then I read the reviews on Amazon. All over the place! Some
people love the product, others absolutely hated it. I also checked
out the reviews at newgg, and they weren't as bad as on amazon, but
there were enough people who also hated the product. After my
experience with System Commander, I'm a bit more cautious now.
The problem with user reviews is that you have no way to know if the
person writing the review knows what they are talking about, and boot
management is certainly not for newbies.
If you do use Acronis Disk Director, do you also use Drive Image Home?
Why?
-AH
