Richard Cobbett / PC Plus (UK) March 2002 Original article location: www.pcplus.co.uk
Acronis OS Selector 5.0 DeluxeWindows XP, Windows 98, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, MS-DOS, OS/2, QNX...
There are certain words that never really sit well together. 'Risk-free' and 'PC maintenance'. 'Excellent' and 'mouse replacement'. Not to mention 'easy to use' and 'FAT16 LBA, FAT32 LBA and Extended LBA partition types mean the same as FAT16, FAT32 and Extended respectively'. It's the latter that poses OS Selector 5.0 Deluxe's only major problem. It's an excellent package — it's fast, well structured and comes with enough checks and safeguards to prevent you from serious harm — but it's terrible at helping you through the process. To begin with, OS Selector refused to install. Running from Windows it crashed the test PC; running from DOS it produced a warning that there was no suitable place on the disk to store it. Deducing that Roxio GoBack was causing the problem here was not a case worthy of Dr Watson's notepad, because we had installed it precisely to do do so. However, unlike Norton Ghost 2002 and several other packages, OS Selector was incapable of telling us to remove it.
GoBack on trackDuly installed and run, it promptly hit another snag: we were unable to create a new partition because of a lack of space, and, at the same time, unable to shrink the existing Windows partition. The problem was just a few cross-linked files, but instead of telling us to run Scandisk and then come back or sorting it out itself, OS Selector locked several settings in position and greyed out many of the other sections. After we fixed this, we created a new partition to hold a new operating system. But what should we be formatting it to? FAT16? FAT32? Linux ReiserFS? Again, a minor concern, with the worst case scenario being the need to simply reformat the partition for another try — but it would take only seconds to explain this in the program itself.
Installing the new OSFinally, it was time to install the new OS. We chose SuSE Linux for this, dual-booted with Windows 98. The installation itself went very smoothly; the familiar KDE desktop kicked up on the screen and we had access to all of the files in our original partition. A complete success? No. Rebooting the system, OS Selector completely failed to pick it up as an installed OS and we could not boot into it again. The solution was to start from scratch, but this time ignoring OS Selector's own instructions and preventing SuSE from installing the LILO boot loader. Happily, these are all minor problems to anyone with a basic understanding of the subject, although if you are new to this, you are unlikely to be allowed to cause any serious problems. Part of this is down to the fact that, instead of being a Windows application, all of OS Selector's functions are controlled via the boot loader. This is a menu that appears every time you switch on your PC, offering you a list of available operating systems to boot into and customise. Furthermore, OS Selector queues and previews every action that you make, only committing itself once you hit the button — preferable to your cat casually obliterating your files by hopping on to the DEL key. After partitioning, OS Selector automatically detects any installed operating systems, adding them to its list the next time that you boot up. It is a full multi-booting system, enabling you to re-order options, set passwords for partitions and prevent individual operating systems from seeing each others' files — not to mention keeping your users from accessing the machine's settings. It even keeps an eye out for boot sector viruses, warning you of their presence and advising you to install some anti-virus software ASAP. This boot-loader neatly sidesteps much of the cost stigma of Partition Magic et al. Need to test software in isolated environments? No problem at all. Want a separate 'games OS' for the kids, where you can be sure of your vital documents not being stomped on by giant robots? All are simple to do. If only there was a touch more hand-holding, there would be nothing keeping OS Selector 5.0 Deluxe from an Editor's Choice award.
|
Acronis Inc. Backup software.