Review: Paragon Hard Disk Manager disk management

Hard disk management is something that concerns everyone at one time or another, but the majority of computer users simply utilise the rather basic but fairly capable tools provided with Windows.

Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager combines all of these and more into a single user-friendly application. The program is split into four main categories. You’ll find a selection of tools to create, format and delete hard disk partitions, along with options to manage existing partitions by merging or redistributing free space.

You can also create, schedule and manage backups, and create copies of either entire drives or selected files as well as use additional management tools to check archive integrity or build recovery discs to safeguard against worst-case situations.

It’s a pretty extensive feature set, and one of the most impressive aspects of the software from a usability point of view is the wizard-based operation and the amount of information you’re provided while you carry out a task.

Formatting, repartitioning or backing up data always requires a great deal of care to prevent unwanted data loss, and the way Hard Disk Manager keeps you informed at each stage of the process is one of its biggest strengths.

You’re given examples on the state of your computer in ‘before’ and ‘after’ views and provided with warnings or further information to qualify the state of your system throughout the change. In addition you can undo the majority of actions extremely easily, so there’s distinct peace of mind – something new users and beginners will particularly appreciate.

The full version of the personal edition is available for around £30, which is extremely reasonable considering the wide range of tools on offer. You can also download a demo from our site to check out the advantages of the package for yourself before you buy.

There’s plenty of tuning software around that serves as little more than a different interface to tools already present in Windows. But, Hard Disk Manager combines plenty of new tools as well as offering a user-friendly and informative interface for managing your PC.

This version isn’t compatible with Vista, however a free upgrade to version 8.5, which will include Vista compatibility, will be available on release. See Paragon’s Vista site for more information.