Paragon Hard Disk Manager

Note: The application is free during previews and will remain so even after becoming stable. However, it doesn't offer support and updates.

Freshly released and designed as a free version of Paragon Hard Disk Manager, this is a software suite that comes bundled with multiple tools to help you take care of your computer easier: backup and recovery, partition manager, disk wiper, and drive copier.

These four components are neatly structured in the main app window. Just keep in mind that Paragon Hard Disk Manager cannot run multiple jobs at the same time. In order to access a new module, it's necessary to disable the old one (even if it means clicking the "Cancel" button to close a window).

When it comes to backup and recovery, it's possible to create a single backup or an entire job. It's quite easy to do this since the application puts a wizard at your disposal. Typical options are available, such as setting the backup name and description.

You can back up individual files and folders, files by type, an entire partition, or the whole computer, and this data can be copied to local, external or network locations. Once an initially full backup is created, you can run incremental jobs to add only new or modified files.

Besides restoring a full backup, it's possible to extract only the files you're interested in. There are also utilities available for checking file integrity, mounting and unmounting backups, and managing files.

Paragon Hard Disk Manager gives you the possibility to study partition info, such as filetype, used and free space, serial number, and unallocated free space. It has options for restoring previously deleted files (undeleter), splitting a drive into two or more partitions, and redistributing free space.

Meanwhile, the disk wiper can be used to securely delete important partitions or entire disks, in order to make sure that they cannot be recovered by someone else. In addition to wiping out all data, it can clear free space in order to destroy traces of already deleted files. It uses the SSD trimming algorithm (for SSD drives) but supports others too, such as US DoD 5220.22-M, Gutmann, and Russian GOST R 50739-95.

Lastly, the drive copier facilitates a simple solution for migrating the operating system to different volumes, copying partitions, verifying filesystem integrity, and testing the partition surface.

The application is not ready to be released as a stable product yet, which means that stability issues are likely to occur. For instance, it displayed errors and crashed several times on Windows 10 in our tests when attempting to cancel backup jobs. Nevertheless, Paragon Hard Disk Manager looks promising and we're looking forward to what it has to offer.