Paragon Drive Copy 8 Professional

With the capacity of hard disks increasing, it is often easier to replace a nearly full hard disk rather than add a second drive to your PC.

Paragon Drive Copy 8 Professional aims to help you out with this, as well as offering a backup tool.

The interface is easy to use and information such as the contents of disks and partitions is displayed graphically with shading to show the amount of free space.

This information can also be displayed by clicking on the partition in question.

The One Button Copy wizard option is very fast - almost too fast as there is only a five second delay to review the options.

Copying an 80GB disk to a 140GB model took just under 30 minutes and did not require a reboot.

There are several useful options including the ability to skip certain system files without missing important information such as the boot sector, which is vital for dual booting systems.

Partition sizes can also be changed as part of the process. Bear in mind though that the disk you copy to must be empty, without any partitions on it.

The scheduling options mean that Drive Copy 8 can also be used as a backup tool.

Operations can be scheduled as a one-off, when the computer starts or when the user logs on.

Alternatively, you can set them to run at a particular time of the week or month.

Some basic partition management can be performed with this software, although the Undelete tool is the only function not already offered by Windows.

The bootable CD is a useful diagnostic tool, especially as it recognises Linux partitions as well as NTFS and Fat32

But ultimately, it's the high price tag that holds Drive Copy 8 back.

A cheaper Personal version is available, but this does not included the tools for creating and recovering partitions, updating information such as the MBR (master boot record) or the ability to run in a Terminal Session on Windows NT4/2000/2003 Server.

System requirements:
Pentium 300Mhz or higher
128MB of Ram
40MB hard disk
Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Server 2003