Paragon Hard Disk Manager is a Windows disk management suite for changing partitions, moving an operating system, creating backups and erasing storage. The Advanced edition brings Partition Manager, Drive Copy, Backup & Recovery and Disk Wiper into one application for home computers. It handles both changes to a working drive and the saved copies needed to restore its contents later.
Partition layout
Partition Manager changes how a disk’s capacity is divided between volumes. You can resize a partition, redistribute free space, split a volume or merge partitions. These operations address the layout within an existing disk, such as allocating more capacity to a Windows partition instead of leaving it assigned elsewhere.
Paragon Hard Disk Manager also creates and formats partitions, assigns drive letters and changes volume labels. Its conversion tools cover primary and logical partitions, MBR and GPT partitioning, and supported conversions between FAT, NTFS and HFS file systems.
A file-system integrity check examines a volume’s structure, while a surface test looks for bad sectors. For work below the file level, the built-in hex editor allows sectors to be viewed and edited directly.
BitLocker-encrypted volumes have a separate limit: their layout cannot be changed. Once a volume is unlocked with its password or recovery key, backup, restore and copying operations are available. Dynamic-disk support is limited to MBR disks; GPT dynamic disks are unsupported.
Drive migration
Drive Copy transfers a complete disk, an individual partition or the Windows operating system to another drive. A full disk copy produces an uncompressed replica on the destination, giving migration a different output from a backup container that must later be restored.
Paragon Hard Disk Manager can relocate Windows while the current system remains in use. You choose the destination drive and switch to the transferred system when copying is complete. This makes the migration tools relevant to replacing an HDD with an SSD as well as moving data between disks.
Backup jobs
Backups can cover an entire system, selected volumes or files. Each job has its own settings and can run on a schedule, with exclusions to leave unwanted data out of the copy. Compression changes how much space the backup occupies, and encryption protects access to its contents.
Incremental and differential imaging record only the changes between backups. The program supports pVHD, VHD, VHDX and VMDK backup containers and includes a verification function to check backup data. You can keep and edit multiple jobs without a fixed limit on their number, and email notifications can report successful operations or failures.
Backup restoration
A saved backup can supply a whole disk, a partition, or individual files and folders. Restoration can return data to its original location or send it to a new one, and partition restoration includes resizing.
Paragon Hard Disk Manager can restore from an existing backup job, an isolated backup container or an older PBF image. The File Transfer Wizard also copies files between storage using Windows, macOS and Linux file systems, and can replace corrupted data with copies from a previous backup. It includes CD and DVD output for file transfers.
Bootable recovery media
Recovery Media Builder creates a Windows PE environment as a bootable USB drive or an ISO image, with BIOS and UEFI support. Storage drivers can be included and network connections prepared so the recovery environment has access to the devices needed for the operation.
These tools remain usable when the installed Windows system cannot start or the destination machine has no operating system. Backup jobs can be imported into Windows PE for restoration, while Boot Corrector addresses boot problems.
Disk wiping
Disk Wiper can target an entire hard disk, a partition or only its free space. Whole-disk and partition wiping address the selected storage contents; free-space wiping targets the unused area instead of the files still allocated there. The controls include sanitization algorithms, SSD TRIM and cleanup reports that record the operation.
Paragon Hard Disk Manager Advanced licenses
Advanced is a paid home-use edition, with a perpetual license for three computers or an annual license for one. It excludes domain-joined computers, Windows Server and operations with virtual machines. If an annual subscription expires, the program’s functions are blocked; restoring its backups then requires renewal or a new product license.
