ACRONIS DISK DIRECTOR 11 ADVANCED SERVER - User manual

Acronis® Disk Director® 11
Advanced Server
User's Guide

Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010. All rights reserved.
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Software and/or Service at http://kb.acronis.com/content/7696

Table of contents
1Introducing Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Advanced.................................................................... 6
2Acronis Disk Director components ........................................................................................... 8
2.1 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Management Console .......................................................8
2.2 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Agent for Windows ...........................................................8
2.3 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Bootable Media Builder ....................................................8
3Installation and upgrade..........................................................................................................9
3.1 Before installation .....................................................................................................................9
3.1.1 System requirements ...................................................................................................................................9
3.1.2 Supported operating systems......................................................................................................................9
3.1.3 Supported file systems...............................................................................................................................10
3.1.4 Supported media........................................................................................................................................10
3.1.5 Licensing policy...........................................................................................................................................10
3.2 Installation ...............................................................................................................................11
3.2.1 Where to install the components ..............................................................................................................11
3.2.2 Installation procedure ................................................................................................................................11
3.2.3 Specifying credentials for Acronis services................................................................................................11
3.3 Upgrading Acronis Disk Director..............................................................................................12
3.3.1 Upgrading from demo to full product version ..........................................................................................12
3.3.2 Upgrading from previous product versions...............................................................................................12
3.4 Uninstalling Acronis Disk Director ...........................................................................................13
3.5 Technical Support ....................................................................................................................14
4Basic concepts ....................................................................................................................... 15
4.1 Basic and dynamic disks...........................................................................................................15
4.2 Types of basic volumes ............................................................................................................16
4.3 Types of dynamic volumes ......................................................................................................16
4.4 Active, system, and boot volumes...........................................................................................17
4.5 Dynamic volume types support...............................................................................................18
4.6 Volume alignment in disks with a 4-KB sector size..................................................................19
5Getting started ...................................................................................................................... 21
5.1 Precautions ..............................................................................................................................21
5.2 User privileges .........................................................................................................................21
5.3 Running Acronis Disk Director .................................................................................................21
5.4 Using the management console ..............................................................................................22
5.4.1 "Disk management" view...........................................................................................................................23
5.4.2 "Tasks" view................................................................................................................................................27
5.4.3 "Log" view...................................................................................................................................................29
5.4.4 Console options ..........................................................................................................................................31
5.4.5 Machine options.........................................................................................................................................32
5.4.6 Collecting system information ...................................................................................................................33
5.5 How to .....................................................................................................................................33

6Volume operations ................................................................................................................ 35
6.1 Creating a volume....................................................................................................................35
6.2 Resizing a volume ....................................................................................................................37
6.3 Copying a volume ....................................................................................................................38
6.4 Moving a volume .....................................................................................................................39
6.5 Merging basic volumes ............................................................................................................40
6.6 Formatting a volume ...............................................................................................................41
6.7 Deleting a volume....................................................................................................................42
6.8 Splitting a volume ....................................................................................................................42
6.9 Changing a volume label..........................................................................................................43
6.10 Changing a drive letter ............................................................................................................44
6.11 Converting a primary volume to logical...................................................................................44
6.12 Converting a logical volume to primary...................................................................................45
6.13 Changing a partition type ........................................................................................................45
6.14 Setting a volume active............................................................................................................46
6.15 Adding a mirror........................................................................................................................46
6.16 Removing a mirror ...................................................................................................................47
6.17 Breaking a mirrored volume ....................................................................................................48
6.18 Browsing a volume's content...................................................................................................48
6.19 Checking a volume for errors...................................................................................................48
6.20 Defragmenting a volume .........................................................................................................49
6.21 Changing a cluster size.............................................................................................................49
6.22 Changing a file system .............................................................................................................50
6.23 Hiding a volume .......................................................................................................................51
6.24 Unhiding a volume...................................................................................................................51
6.25 Repairing a RAID-5 volume ......................................................................................................51
6.26 Specifying i-node density.........................................................................................................52
7Disk operations...................................................................................................................... 54
7.1 Disk initialization......................................................................................................................54
7.2 Basic disk cloning .....................................................................................................................55
7.3 Disk conversion: MBR to GPT ..................................................................................................56
7.4 Disk conversion: GPT to MBR ..................................................................................................57
7.5 Disk conversion: basic to dynamic...........................................................................................58
7.6 Disk conversion: dynamic to basic...........................................................................................58
7.7 Changing a disk status: online to offline..................................................................................59
7.8 Changing a disk status: offline to online..................................................................................60
7.9 Importing foreign disks ............................................................................................................60
7.10 Removing a missing disk ..........................................................................................................61
7.11 Cleaning up a disk ....................................................................................................................61

8Tools...................................................................................................................................... 63
8.1 Acronis Bootable Media Builder ..............................................................................................63
8.1.1 How to create bootable media ..................................................................................................................64
8.1.2 Working under bootable media.................................................................................................................68
8.2 Acronis Recovery Expert ..........................................................................................................70
8.3 Acronis Disk Editor...................................................................................................................71
8.3.1 Starting work with Acronis Disk Editor ......................................................................................................72
8.3.2 Main window, menu and controls.............................................................................................................72
8.3.3 Editing disks ................................................................................................................................................73
8.3.4 View ............................................................................................................................................................74
8.3.5 Search .........................................................................................................................................................74
8.3.6 Usage examples..........................................................................................................................................75
9Working in the command-line mode...................................................................................... 79
9.1 Supported commands .............................................................................................................79
9.2 Usage examples .......................................................................................................................81
10 Glossary................................................................................................................................. 82

6 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
1Introducing Acronis®Disk Director®11
Advanced
Acronis® Disk Director® 11 Advanced is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for managing disks and
volumes on local and remote machines. With a comprehensive set of operations, you can organize
your hard disk and volume configuration for optimal performance, while keeping your data safe.
Key features
Acronis Disk Director offers many features including:
New! Create both basic and dynamic volumes
The handy Create Volume wizard has been improved to support dynamic volumes creation. Now,
in addition to basic volumes, you can easily create dynamic volumes in Acronis Disk Director to:
Increase the volume size beyond the capacity of a single disk, by using a spanned volume
Reduce access time to files, by using a striped volume
Achieve fault tolerance, by using a mirrored and RAID-5 volumes*
New! Add, remove, or break mirrored volumes*
Make your basic or simple volume fault-tolerant in just one action by adding a mirror. If you need
extra unallocated space on a disk containing one of the mirrors—remove a mirror. Break a
mirrored volume to get two independent simple volumes with initially identical content.
New! Copy or move a volume of one type as a volume of another type
Change the type of a volume when copying or moving it. For example, you can copy the contents
of a mirrored volume to a spanned volume.
New! Convert primary volumes to logical and vice versa
Convert a primary volume to logical to create a fifth volume on a disk that currently has four
primary volumes.
New! Repair RAID-5 volumes
Restore a RAID-5 volume performance by reconstructing the data of the failed member on
another disk.
New! Convert basic disks to dynamic and vice versa
Convert the existing basic disks to dynamic to achieve additional disk reliability for data storage.
New! Convert GPT disks to MBR and vice versa
Change the partitioning scheme of your disk to the way you need it.
New! Import foreign disks
Make dynamic disks added from another machine accessible for the system.
New! Changing a disk status: online to offline and vice versa*
Change a disk status to offline in order to protect it from unintentional use.
New! Disk cloning
The Disk Cloning wizard lets you replace the old basic MBR disk with a new one without
reinstalling operating systems and applications. It transfers all of the source disk data to a target
disk. The source disk volumes can be cloned to the target disk "as is", or resized automatically
according to the target disk size.

7 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
Disk and volume management operations
Experience the vast array of disk and volume management operations:
Resize, move, copy, split and merge volumes without data loss or destruction
Format and label volumes, change file systems, clusters size, assign volume letters, and set
volumes active
Delete volumes and clean up disks
Hide/unhide volumes
Specify i-node density
Initialize newly added hard disks
Explore volume data, even on Linux volumes, before performing operations
Preview changes made in disk and volume layout before applying them
Browse through the detailed information about all hard disks, volumes, and file systems
Acronis Recovery Expert
Helps you to recover accidentally lost or deleted volumes on basic MBR disks.
Acronis Bootable Media Builder
Now, you can create bootable media based both on WinPE and Linux to use Acronis Disk Director
on bare metal or outside of an operating system.
Acronis Disk Editor
A professional tool that performs a variety of actions on a hard disk.
Log
Examine information about disk and volume operations, including reasons for failure, if any.
* For the operating systems that support such functionality.

8 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
2Acronis Disk Director components
2.1 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Management
Console
The management console is an administrative tool for remote or local access to Acronis agents.
2.2 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Agent for
Windows
The agent provides disk management functionality such as, creating, resizing and merging volumes,
cloning disks, converting disks, changing a disk partitioning style between MBR and GPT or changing a
disk label, etc. These operations can be performed either in the operating system or using bootable
media.
2.3 Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Bootable Media
Builder
The Bootable Media Builder is a dedicated tool for creating bootable media (p. 83). The media
builder can create bootable media based on either Windows Preinstallation Environment, or Linux
kernel.

9 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
3Installation and upgrade
This section answers questions that might arise before the product installation and guides you
through the installation and upgrade of Acronis Disk Director.
In this section
Before installation......................................................................................9
Installation ...............................................................................................11
Upgrading Acronis Disk Director ..............................................................12
Uninstalling Acronis Disk Director............................................................13
Technical Support ....................................................................................14
3.1 Before installation
This section answers questions that might arise before the product installation.
3.1.1 System requirements
System requirements
Component Memory (above the
OS and running
applications)
Disk space required
during installation or
update
Disk space occupied
by the
component(s)
Additional
Complete installation 300 MB 2 GB 1.01 GB
Agent for Windows 120 MB 500 MB 260 MB BIOS-based*
Bootable Media Builder 80 MB 700 MB 350 MB CD-RW or
DVD-RW
drive
Management Console 30 MB 700 MB 400 MB Screen
resolution
1024*768
pixels or
higher
* Machines that are based on Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) are not supported.
Bootable media
Media type Memory ISO image size
Based on Windows PE 512 MB 300 MB
Linux-based 256 MB 130 MB
3.1.2 Supported operating systems
Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Agent for Windows
Windows XP Professional SP2+
Windows Server 2003/Server 2008

10 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
Windows SBS 2003/SBS 2008
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows Server 2003/2008 x64 Editions
Windows Vista - all editions except for Vista Home Basic and Vista Home Premium
Windows 7 - all editions except for the Starter and Home editions
Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Management Console
Windows XP Home Editions/XP Professional SP2+
Windows Server 2003/Server 2008
Windows SBS 2003/SBS 2008
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows Server 2003/2008 x64 Editions
Windows Vista - all editions
Windows 7 - all editions
3.1.3 Supported file systems
Acronis Disk Director supports the following file systems for performing operations:
FAT16
FAT32
NTFS
Ext2
Ext3
Reiser3
Linux SWAP
The operations resulting in a change of volume size—that is: Create (p. 35), Resize (p. 37), Copy (p.
38), Move (p. 39), Merge (p. 40), Split (p. 42)—are not available for the XFS, Reiser4, HPFS and JFS file
systems.
3.1.4 Supported media
Hard disk drives (HDD) and solid-state drives (SSD)
Support for IDE, SCSI and SATA interfaces
CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R (including double-layer DVD+R), DVD+RW, DVD-RAM, BD-R, BD-RE
for bootable media creation*
USB 1.1 / 2.0 / 3.0, FireWire (IEEE-1394) hard disk drives
PC card storage devices
* Burned rewritable discs cannot be read in Linux without a kernel patch.
3.1.5 Licensing policy
Acronis Disk Director licensing is based on the number of Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Agents
for Windows. One license key enables installation of agent on one machine. The license key is
entered during the agent installation.

11 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
3.2 Installation
This section helps answer questions that might arise during the product installation.
3.2.1 Where to install the components
The minimum configuration that enables you to perform disk management operations on a machine
includes Agent and Management Console. Connect the console to the machine where the agent is
installed and perform disk management operations on the machine.
An agent has to be installed on each machine you want to manage. The console, which provides the
GUI to the agents, should be installed on the machines from where the disk management operations
have to be performed.
3.2.2 Installation procedure
Do the following to install Acronis Disk Director:
1. Log on as an administrator and start the setup program.
2. Click Install Acronis Disk Director.
3. Accept the terms of the license agreement.
4. Select the installation type:
The Typical installation will install all Disk Director components.
The Custom installation lets you specify the components that you want to install.
5. Enter the license key. You need to enter the product license key at each agent installation.
6. Specify where to install the components. By default, the setup program will install components
to the C:\Program Files\Acronis\.
7. Specify credentials (p. 11) for the account under which the agent service will run. By default, the
setup program will create a dedicated user account for the service.
8. Confirm opening of the Microsoft Windows Firewall port.
Details. Acronis Disk Director uses TCP port 9876 for local installation and for communication
between components. If you use a different firewall, make sure that the port is open for both
incoming and outgoing requests through that firewall.
9. The summary window displays the list of components that will be installed on the machine. Click
Install to proceed with the installation.
10. After the installation, click Close to exit the setup program.
If you have several full licenses and need to install agents on other machines, repeat this procedure
for each machine.
Note: When canceling the installation process, only the last package is removed. Other components, if any,
remain installed.
3.2.3 Specifying credentials for Acronis services
Acronis Disk Director Agent runs as Windows service. When installing this component, you need to
specify the account under which the agent's service will run.
You can either create a dedicated user account or specify the existing account of a local or domain
user.

12 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
If you choose to create a dedicated user account for the service (recommended), the setup program
will create the following user account:
Acronis Agent User
The newly created account is given the following privileges:
The account is assigned the Log on as a service, Adjust memory quotas for a process, and
Replace a process level token user rights.
The account is included in the Backup Operators group.
If you choose to specify an existing local or domain user account—for example, .\LocalUser or
DomainName\DomainUser—make sure that the account is a member of the Administrators group,
before proceeding with the installation. The setup program will assign the above listed user rights to
the account.
If the machine is part of an Active Directory domain, make sure that the domain's security policies do
not prevent the account from having the above listed user rights.
Important: After the installation, do not specify a different user account for the agent service. Otherwise, the
agent may stop working.
3.3 Upgrading Acronis Disk Director
This section describes how to upgrade Acronis Disk Director.
3.3.1 Upgrading from demo to full product version
The demo key required at installation can be obtained on the Acronis Web site.
The demo version of Acronis Disk Director is fully functional, except for the following limitations:
All volume operations can be performed on volumes whose initial and resulting size is not larger
than 100 MB. Operations on volumes whose size is larger than 100 MB cannot be committed.
The following disk operations can be committed only if the total size of all volumes on the disk is
not larger than 100 MB:
MBR to GPT (p. 56) and vice versa (p. 57) disk conversion.
Basic to dynamic (p. 58) and vice versa (p. 58) disk conversion.
Clone basic disk (p. 55).
Clean up disk (p. 61).
To upgrade from the demo version to the full product, you do not need to re-download the software.
To upgrade from demo to full product version
1. Connect the console to the machine and click Help > Switch to full license.
2. Enter the full license key.
3.3.2 Upgrading from previous product versions
Preparation
If the languages of the two products are different, uninstall Acronis Disk Director 10 before installing
Acronis Disk Director 11. Otherwise, the installation will fail.

13 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
The procedures below assume that you have an upgrade license key, but you can also use these
procedures if you have a full license key.
Upgrading Acronis Disk Director 10 Server to Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced
Server
Before proceeding with the upgrade, make sure that:
You have the license key for Acronis Disk Director 10 Server.
You have a full or upgrade license key for Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Server.
The upgrade procedure
1. Log on as an administrator to the machine where Acronis Disk Director 10 Server is installed.
2. Start the Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced setup program.
3. Click Install Acronis Disk Director.
4. For the upgrade license key: Specify the upgrade license key and the license key for Acronis Disk
Director 10 Server.
For the full license key: specify only the key for Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Server.
5. Follow the on-screen instructions as described in Installation procedure (p. 11).
Result: Acronis Disk Director 10 Suite is replaced with Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced Server.
3.4 Uninstalling Acronis Disk Director
The uninstallation removes Acronis Disk Director 11 components from the machine. You can remove
the components in using any of the following ways:
From the Start menu. In this case, all the components of Acronis Disk Director will be uninstalled
at once.
Acronis Disk Director setup program - lets you uninstall individual components.
To uninstall all components of Acronis Disk Director
1. Log on as an administrator to the machine, where Acronis Disk Director components are
installed.
2. Select Start -> All Programs -> Acronis -> Acronis Disk Director 11 Advanced -> Uninstall Disk
Director 11 Advanced.
3. Click Remove.
4. Proceed with uninstallation.
Result: All the installed components of Acronis Disk Director will be removed from the machine.
To uninstall individual components of Acronis Disk Director
1. Log on as an administrator to the machine, where Acronis Disk Director components are
installed.
2. Start the Acronis Disk Director setup program.
3. Click Install Acronis Disk Director.
4. Click Modify.
5. Clear the check boxes next to the names of the components that you want to uninstall.
6. Proceed with uninstallation.
Result: The individual components of Acronis Disk Director will be removed from the machine.

14 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
3.5 Technical Support
Maintenance and Support Program
If you need assistance with your Acronis product, please go to http://www.acronis.eu/support/
Product Updates
You can download the latest updates for all your registered Acronis software products from our
website at any time after logging into your Account (http ) and registering the
product. See Registering Acronis Products at the Website (
s://www.acronis.eu/my
http ) and
Acronis Website User Guide (
://kb.acronis.com/content/4834
http ).://kb.acronis.com/content/8128

15 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
4Basic concepts
This section gives you a clear understanding of basic and dynamic disks and volume types.
After reading this section, you will know the advantages and limitations of each possible volume
configuration. In addition, you will be able to decide what types of disks and volumes best suit your
needs for organizing data storage.
In this section
Basic and dynamic disks...........................................................................15
Types of basic volumes ............................................................................16
Types of dynamic volumes.......................................................................16
Active, system, and boot volumes ...........................................................17
Dynamic volume types support ...............................................................18
Volume alignment in disks with a 4-KB sector size..................................19
4.1 Basic and dynamic disks
Each disk on your machine can be one of two types: basic or dynamic.
Basic disks
This is the type of disk that most computers originally have.
Basic disks can normally be used by any operating system, including any version of Windows.
A basic disk can store one or more volumes—called basic volumes. A basic volume cannot occupy
more than one disk.
When to use basic disks:
On a machine that has only one hard disk drive
On a machine that runs an older Windows operating system, or an operating system other than
Windows
By using Acronis Disk Director, you can convert a basic disk to a dynamic disk (p. 58).
Dynamic disks
These disks provide a greater functionality as compared to basic disks.
Dynamic disks can be used only by the Windows operating systems starting with Windows 2000.
A dynamic disk can store one or more volumes—called dynamic volumes. Unlike a basic volume, a
dynamic volume can occupy more than one disk.
When to use dynamic disks. Dynamic disks are most effective if your machine has more than one
hard disk drive. In this case, you can:
Create a large volume that occupies several disks.
Add fault-tolerance to your system and data, by mirroring a volume—such as the one with the
operating system—to another disk. If a disk with one of these mirrors fails, no data will be lost on
such volume.

16 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
By using Acronis Disk Director, you can convert a dynamic disk to a basic disk (p. 58). You may need
to do so, for example, to install an operating system other than Windows on that disk.
Converting a dynamic disk to basic may require deleting some volumes on it, such as volumes that
occupy more than one disk.
4.2 Types of basic volumes
A basic disk can store two types of volumes: primary volumes and logical volumes.
The main difference between a primary volume and a logical volume is that a primary volume can be
used as the system or active volume—that is, a volume from which the machine or its Windows
operating systems start.
On each basic GPT (p. 88) disk, you can create up to 128 primary volumes. The maximum volume size
on a GPT disk is 16 exabytes.
Unlike basic GPT disks, on each basic MBR (p. 89) disk, you can create either up to four primary
volumes, or up to three primary volumes plus an unlimited number of logical volumes. The maximum
volume size on an MBR disk is 2 terabytes.
If you are not planning to use more than four volumes on the disk, all volumes can be primary
volumes. Otherwise, you can leave the active volume and the system volume as primary volumes,
and then create as many logical volumes as required.
If the disk already has four primary volumes and you need to create a fifth volume, first convert one
of the volumes—but not the system or active volume—to a logical volume, as described in
Converting a primary volume to logical (p. 44), and then create a new logical volume.
4.3 Types of dynamic volumes
The following are the types of dynamic volumes that are supported by Acronis Disk Director—
provided that they are supported by the operating system, as shown in Dynamic volume types
support (p. 18).
Simple volume
A volume (p. 93) that consists of disk space from a single dynamic disk (p. 85).
Physically, a simple volume can occupy more than one region of disk space, which can be logically
perceived as a single contiguous region.
When you extend a simple volume to another disk, the volume becomes a spanned volume (p. 92).
When you add a mirror to a simple volume, the volume becomes a mirrored volume (p. 90).
Spanned volume
A volume that consists of disk space from two or more dynamic disks (p. 85), in portions that do not
need to be equally-sized.
A spanned volume can reside on up to 32 disks.
Unlike mirrored (p. 90) and RAID-5 (p. 91) volumes, spanned volumes are not fault-tolerant. Unlike
striped volumes (p. 92), spanned volumes do not provide faster data access.

17 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
Striped volume
A volume that resides on two or more dynamic disks and whose data is evenly distributed across
equally-sized portions of disk space (called stripes) on those disks.
Access to data on striped volumes is usually faster than on other types of dynamic volumes, because
it can be performed simultaneously on multiple hard disks.
Unlike a mirrored volume (p. 90), a striped volume does not contain redundant information, so it is
not fault-tolerant.
A striped volume is also known as a RAID-0 volume.
Mirrored volume
A fault-tolerant volume whose data is duplicated on two physical disks (p. 90).
Each of the two parts of a mirrored volume is called a mirror.
All of the data on one disk is copied to another disk to provide data redundancy. If one of the hard
disks fails, the data can still be accessed from the remaining hard disks.
Volumes that can be mirrored include the system volume (p. 93) and a boot volume (p. 83).
A mirrored volume is sometimes called a RAID-1 volume.
Note: No redundancy provided by the dynamic volumes architecture can replace the proper backup procedure.
If you want to be sure of the safety of your data, the best policy is to combine both precautions.
RAID-5 volume
A fault-tolerant volume (p. 93) whose data is striped in equally-sized blocks across an array of three
or more disks (p. 84).
Fault tolerance is achieved by using parity, a calculated value that can be used to reconstruct data in
case of a failure. Parity is also striped across the disk array. Parity is always stored on a different disk
than the data itself. If one of the hard disks fails, the portion of the RAID-5 volume that was on that
hard disk can be recreated from the remaining data and the parity.
A RAID-5 volume has a higher volume-size-to-disk-space ratio than a mirrored volume. For example,
suppose that you want to use 120 GB of disk space to create a fault-tolerant volume:
By using two 60-GB disks, you can create a 60-GB mirrored volume.
By using three 40-GB disks, you can create an 80-GB RAID-5 volume.
4.4 Active, system, and boot volumes
Some volumes on the disks of your machine contain information that is necessary for the machine to
start and for a particular operating system to run. Each such volume is called active, system, or boot,
depending on its function.
If only one Windows operating system is installed on your machine, a single volume is often the
active, system, and boot volume at the same time.
Because of their special role, you should use extra caution when performing operations with these
volumes. Some operations with these volumes have limitations as compared to ordinary volumes.

18 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
Active volume
This is the volume from which the machine starts after you switch it on.
The active volume usually contains one of the following programs:
The operating system
A program that enables you to choose which operating system to run (if more than one is
installed), such as GRUB
A diagnostic or recovery tool that runs before the operating system, such as Acronis Startup
Recovery Manager
In Acronis Disk Director, the active volume is marked with a flag-like icon:
If you choose to run a Windows operating system, the start process continues from the volume
known as the system volume.
System volume
This is the volume from which any of the installed Windows operating systems starts—even if more
than one is installed.
The system volume contains files that are necessary to start Windows, such as boot.ini and Ntldr.
There is always one system volume, whereas each of the installed Windows operating systems
usually stores its files on its own volume, called a boot volume.
Boot volume
This is the volume on which the files of a particular Windows operating system are stored.
A boot volume contains folders such as the Program Files folder and the Windows folder.
Note: The notions of system volume and boot volume apply only to Windows operating systems.
4.5 Dynamic volume types support
The table below lists the operating systems that support certain dynamic volume types.
Simple Spanned Striped Mirrored RAID-5
Windows XP Home - - - - -
Windows XP Professional + + + - -
Windows XP Professional x64 + + + - -
Windows Server 2003 + + + + +
Windows Small Business Server 2003 + + + + +
Windows Vista Home Basic + + + - -
Windows Vista Home Premium + + + - -
Windows Vista Business + + + - -
Windows Vista Ultimate + + + - -
Windows Server 2008 + + + + +
Windows Small Business Server 2008 + + + + +

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Windows 7 Starter + + + - -
Windows 7 Home Premium + + + - -
Windows 7 Professional + + + + -
Windows 7 Ultimate + + + + -
4.6 Volume alignment in disks with a 4-KB sector size
When a new volume is created, its beginning is aligned with the disk's physical sector boundaries.
It ensures that each file system allocation unit (cluster) on the volume starts and ends on the
boundaries of the disk's physical sectors. If the volume clusters are aligned with sectors, this volume
and all following volumes are also aligned. If clusters are not aligned with sectors, the volumes are
misaligned. Misalignment decreases the overall system performance and hardware lifetime.
When misalignment occurs
Volume misalignment occurs when you create a volume on a modern HDD or SSD drive that has a 4-
KB sector size using a Windows operating systems earlier than Vista.
What is the cause of misalignment
All Windows operating systems earlier than Vista use a factor of 512 bytes to create volume clusters.
The volume start is aligned to 512-byte sectors. Also, these operating systems use the
Cylinder/Head/Sector (CHS) addressing scheme. Volumes created with this scheme are aligned by
cylinders/tracks of the disk.
Usually, a track consists of 63 physical sectors. Since the first track is reserved for the master boot
record (MBR) and other service purposes, the first volume starts from the beginning of the second
track of the disk. Therefore, volumes aligned by 63 sectors are not aligned with 4-KB sectors: 63
sectors by 512 bytes do not match with the integer number of 4-KB sectors.
Thus, the first created volume and all of the following volumes on the hard disk drive will be
misaligned.
Why misalignment is an important issue for hard disk drives
When a single bit of data is changed, the operating system entirely overwrites the cluster that
contains the changed data. But if misalignment occurs, the cluster will overlap more physical sectors
than it would have occupied if aligned. As a result, more physical sectors need to be erased and
rewritten each time data changes.
The redundant read/write operations noticeably slow down the disk speed and overall system
performance.
The same is true for SSD drives that have a 4-KB or larger sector (memory page) size. For SSD drives
misalignment decreases not only system performance, but also drive lifetime. SSD memory cells are
designed for a certain amount of read/write operations. Therefore, redundant read/write operations
lead to early degradation of the SSD drive.
How to avoid volume misalignment
The latest operating systems, starting from Windows Vista, already support the new sector size.
Thus, volumes created with these operating systems will be properly aligned.

20 Copyright © Acronis, Inc., 2000-2010
Many hard disk drive manufacturers supply their modern drives with controllers that can shift
addressing offset to one sector (63 sector becomes 64 sector), so volumes will appear aligned.
How to work with 4-KB sector size disks using Acronis Disk Director
Suppose that you added a new 4-KB sector size hard disk drive with to a machine that is running
Windows XP only. There are no volumes on this drive yet. If you start creating volumes on this disk
using Windows XP, you may experience some slowdown of the system performance while accessing
the disk. To ensure proper volume alignment and normal access to volumes on this disk, perform the
following steps:
1. Create a bootable media with Acronis Disk Director—see How to create bootable media (p. 64).
2. Run Acronis Disk Director from a bootable media—see Running Acronis Disk Director.
3. Select the Bootable media OS disk layout—see Disk layout (p. 25).
4. Create volumes—see Creating a volume (p. 35).
If Windows 7 or Windows Vista is installed in addition to Windows XP, select the disk layout of either
of those operating systems.
After the volumes are created, you can perform other operations with them (including changing their
size) under any disk layout.
How to fix volume misalignment using Acronis Disk Director
Suppose that you have already created basic volumes on a disk with a 4-KB sector size, using
Windows XP. Volumes already contain data. To align the misaligned volumes on the disk using
Acronis Disk Director, clone this disk to another and then clone it back—see Disk cloning (p. 55). After
cloning, Acronis Disk Director shifts the first volume start with 1MB offset, all the disk volumes will be
aligned properly.