| Version 1.2.241 (1.2.241) | Developer Paragon |
| Website https://www.paragon-software.com/home/hdm-mac/ |
ABOUT PARAGON
The company was established by a group of MIPT students in 1994. A separate mobile division, called the Mobility Division, was formed in 1995. The German office opened in 1998, the Swiss office in 2000. In 2004, the company started working with Fujitsu-Siemens on its handheld PCs Russian localization.[2] Next year, the company expanded the product line of office and gaming applications for Symbian OS and received the “Developer of the Year” award in the Handango Champion Awards 2005.[3]
In 2011, PCMag recognized the company’s flagship solution Paragon Hard Disk Manager as the best hard drive management program. Paragon Software Group also won Global Telecoms Business Innovation Award 2011 for their mobile solution.[4]
All-round solution to protect, maintain and manage your Mac drives.
- Snapshot-driven backup & powerful recovery features
- Resizing partitions and redistributing unused space
- Recovering lost or accidentally deleted partitions
- Disk copying and secure data wiping
- NEW APFS container resizing
- NEW macOS 10.13 High Sierra support ( No official MOJAVE support yet )
WHY USE PARAGON HARD DISK MANAGER
The macOS built-in Disk Utility is all many users will ever need. Apple’s software handles formatting HFS+, FAT32, and exFAT volumes and partitions. The macOS Disk Utility also supports verification and repair of native OS X disks. However, there still are plenty of reasons for wanting to do more with your drives. A few examples are optimising OS X, partitioning drives, or backing up and restore data faster then Time Machine. Paragon HDM also supports the latest APFS file system but not for backing up (still in process)! Additional features are recovery of accidental deleted partitions and SIP support.
INSTALLATION
Installation of Paragon HDM is not difficult, but additional files need to be installed during the proces. System Preferences need to allow the additional files to install. A small mounter utility is installed during installation needed for full high-speed access to virtual drives. PARAGON VMDK MOUNTER is installed in your Mac’s applications folder.
PARAGON VMDK Mounter for Mac OS X. ( Legacy product )
- Very easy to use – mount a virtual container by double clicking or using Finder’s “Open With…” context submenu
- Powerful Command Line Interface utility allows you to create and mount a virtual container
- High performance – high access speed to virtual disk content and high-speed data exchange between host and guest OS
- The first and only solution with full read/write access to virtual disks (even larger than 2TB) on OS X
(Caution: SIP should only be disabled by advanced users who know what they’re doing and understand the risks associated with modifying system-level files.
DISKS & PARTITIONS
Like Disk Utility, Hard Disk Manager’s interface displays a list of all mounted volumes. HDM provides more detailed disk maps, color-coded partitions and logical disks and the file system in use: HFS+, FAT16/32, NTFS, exFAT, ExtFS, and free space. This is a definite better way to show relevant disk information. Hard Disk Manager also displays partition information as a list at the bottom of the window.
HDM can perform; format, partition, and work with non-native NTFS or ExFS volumes. You do need Paragon’s replacement drivers installed to access files. HDM works equally well with solid-state storage (SSD), USB flash drives, and Apple’s hybrid Fusion Drives as with traditional platter-based disks.
BACKUP & RESTORE
One of Paragon’s Features is Snapshot technology, which allows users to create an exact sector-level copy of the operating system and all disk data. Paragon states an improved performance in time between Time Machine and other Mac-backup solutions. The Snapshot feature, offers improved performance with system recovery times. Hows that for improvement.
The Backup and Restore function is simple, as the Create New Archive wizard detects all mounted OS X disks automatically, or you can manually select partitions from the disk map. Every backup needs to be initiated by the user as scheduled backups are not part of the Backup feature. Hard Disk Manager saves archives as Paragon Virtual Hard Drive (PVHD) images by default, which also supports incremental imaging. Incremental Imaging minimises time and storage space required for backups of the same volume(s).
VERDICT
Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager is a must for every user who needs to manage their disk in a more professional way than use of the basic macOS Disk Utility. HDM provides faster backup and restore tools than Time Machine ( see image above). The (re)sizing abilities and the recovery option takes it a step further than most applications. Full Mojave support is not available at this moment (APFS backup functionality). So if you’re already running Mojave you might wait for the update, or if APFS is not your external disks format, buy this good utility saving you time and efford.
$ 39.95