Paragon Software announces Hard Disk Manager 14

FREIBURG, GERMANY: Paragon Software Group (PSG), protection and backup and disaster recovery solution provider, today announced the release of Paragon Hard Disk Manager (HDM) 14 Suite and Professional editions.

HDM 14 is the all-inclusive data management tool for Windows users to maintain and administer PCs and work stations with minimal effort over their entire life cycle. HDM 14 is compatible with the Windows 8 streamlined, tile-oriented interface, offering a Metro-style express launcher and a ribbon-based full-scale launcher.

Hard drives can be partitioned and data can be backed up using a variety of backup routines no matter whether they are in physical or virtual environments. HDM 14 supports dynamic drives and presents users with the ideal solution for modern hard disk management.

Konstantin Komarov, CEO of Paragon Software Group, said: "Hard Disk Manager has been helping Windows users manage and back up their storage for almost 15 years. HDM 14 keeps pace with current practices through full support for Windows 8.1, faster backup to network, and features to assist migration to solid state drives."

"Paragon Software looks forward to meeting its customers' evolving storage management needs in the years ahead," he added.

Providing support for Windows BitLocker, HDM 14 Professional edition allows users to protect valuable or private data not only from accidental loss but also from unauthorized access. HDM 14 delivers faster data protection than the native Windows feature, as well as data recovery of BitLocker encrypted partitions.

HDM 14 introduces the pVHD format optimized for storing backups of virtual and physical machines. Now users have the option to backup data either as PBF files or in the new pVHD (Paragon Virtual Hard Drive) format. pVHD is very efficient in handling incremental chains, data deduplication and synchronization. With pVHD, backups may be up to four times smaller than the original objects.

HDM 14 allows data transfer to SSDs. The software offers source partition size reduction and the option of excluding some data from the transfer. Previously not allowed, the contents of a 512-byte hard disk now can be easily copied or restored to a 4K hard disk.