Two Disk Management Products From Acronis

Disk Director 11 Advanced Server ($609) and Disk Director 11 Advanced Workstation ($80)

Acronis announced the next generation of its corporate disk management products, Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Server and Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Workstation. Each is designed to reduce the time IT administrators are required to spend on the work of managing and maintaining hard drives for better performance and business data safety.

Disk Director 11 Advanced Server

Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Server and Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Workstation simplify the job of moving, resizing and creating partitions on local and remote machines. They combine several features to shorten the time administrators need to convert, resize, copy, split and merge both local and remotely-located volumes. Other features include using striped volumes to increase performance, a central management console and an enhanced user interface. The new products include support for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 in the Advanced Server version and Windows 7 in the Advanced Workstation version.

Additional features include:

Dynamic disk support – Spread volumes over several disks, plus convert existing basic disks to dynamic to achieve additional disk reliability for data storage

GPT disk support – Create volumes over 2 TB and get additional disk reliability against possible data damage

Add or break mirrored volumes – Make a basic or simple volume fault-tolerant in just one action by adding a mirror. If extra unallocated space is needed on a disk containing one of the mirrors, remove a mirror

Span volume across multiple physical disks – Optimize the system by combining free space on different hard disk drives and get larger volumes

Convert MBR disk to GPT and vice versa – Use to make a volume whose size is over 2 TB or if you need more than four primary volumes on one disk

Clone disk to a replacement HDD – Replace basic MBR disks with new ones without reinstalling operating systems and applications

Remote management – Powerful and easy-to-use tool for managing disks and volumes on local and remote machines

“As a user of previous Acronis Disk management products, I am pleased to see that the product is moving forward with new features and support for new versions of the platforms,” said Anders Nilsson, a beta tester and Director of Development, NAF-Data AS in Oslo, Norway. “I am especially pleased with the ability to manage several computers from a central point.”

“Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Server is a big step towards providing full featured support for multiple drive types those currently popular – and those that will be in the coming years,” said Paul, another beta tester from California. “Many features have been added and many of the existing features have been improved.”

“IT administrators have a powerful new tool to help better manage and maintain hard drives in a corporate environment,” said Lisa Robinson Schoeller, Director of Product Marketing at Acronis. “Using the new Acronis Disk Director 11 products, IT administrators can more efficiently manage partitioning on local and remote machines.”

Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Workstation is priced at $79.99 and supports Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.

Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Server is priced at $609.00 and supports Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 R2.