I'm looking for a boot manager that allows me to have multiples OS
partitions on my C drive, but with the inactive partitions hidden, and
an easy way to select the OS to boot when you turn on your system. I'm
willing to spend some money to get a reliable and solid product.
"Free" isn't as important as "works as advertised."

In early 2008 I bought System Commander 9, but never installed it.
Finally this weekend I installed it so I could have multiple OS's
installed, including Win XP, Windows 7 RC, a "scratch and experiment"
Windows, and maybe even Linux someday. But I wanted to have each
install go into its own partition for a clean install, and I wanted
the inactive OS partitions to be hidden, so as not to get tripped up
by Windows' drive naming conventions or any other nonsense.

That was the promise of System Commander, but the reality is that it
has a poorly designed, confusing interface. And, it doesn't even do a
good job of enabling you to do clean installs of Windows in more than
one partition. Waste of money.

The company no longer sells this product, and I'm not surprised. At
this point, I would never touch anything else made by this company,
Avanquest. Of course, I can't get my money back because I bought
this over a year ago.

A google search came up with Acronis Disk Director 10 and several
other products. Disk Director 10 sounds like it would do everything I
need, but then I read the reviews on Amazon. All over the place! Some
people love the product, others absolutely hated it. I also checked
out the reviews at newgg, and they weren't as bad as on amazon, but
there were enough people who also hated the product. After my
experience with System Commander, I'm a bit more cautious now.

The problem with user reviews is that you have no way to know if the
person writing the review knows what they are talking about, and boot
management is certainly not for newbies.

If you do use Acronis Disk Director, do you also use Drive Image Home?
Why?

-AH

Andrew Hamilton wrote

> I'm looking for a boot manager that allows me to have multiples OS
> partitions on my C drive, but with the inactive partitions hidden, and
> an easy way to select the OS to boot when you turn on your system.

http://www.osloader.com/

> I'm willing to spend some money to get a reliable and solid product.
> "Free" isn't as important as "works as advertised."

> In early 2008 I bought System Commander 9, but never installed it.
> Finally this weekend I installed it so I could have multiple OS's
> installed, including Win XP, Windows 7 RC, a "scratch and experiment"
> Windows, and maybe even Linux someday. But I wanted to have each
> install go into its own partition for a clean install, and I wanted
> the inactive OS partitions to be hidden, so as not to get tripped up
> by Windows' drive naming conventions or any other nonsense.

> That was the promise of System Commander, but the reality is that it
> has a poorly designed, confusing interface. And, it doesn't even do a
> good job of enabling you to do clean installs of Windows in more than
> one partition. Waste of money.

> The company no longer sells this product, and I'm not surprised. At
> this point, I would never touch anything else made by this company,
> Avanquest. Of course, I can't get my money back because I bought
> this over a year ago.

> A google search came up with Acronis Disk Director 10 and several
> other products. Disk Director 10 sounds like it would do everything I
> need, but then I read the reviews on Amazon. All over the place! Some
> people love the product, others absolutely hated it. I also checked
> out the reviews at newgg, and they weren't as bad as on amazon, but
> there were enough people who also hated the product. After my
> experience with System Commander, I'm a bit more cautious now.

> The problem with user reviews is that you have no way to know if the
> person writing the review knows what they are talking about, and boot
> management is certainly not for newbies.

One obvious approach is to get a torrent and try it for yourself.

> If you do use Acronis Disk Director, do you also use Drive Image Home?
> Why?

bootitng has a devoted following, including me. It's a bit geeky,
though, but has a great newsgroup with quick responses.

--
Ed Light

Better World News TV Channel:
http://realnews.com

Bring the Troops Home:
http://bringthemhomenow.org
http://antiwar.com

Iraq Veterans Against the War:
http://ivaw.org
http://couragetoresist.org

Send spam to the FTC at
(E-Mail Removed)
Thanks, robots.

Andrew Hamilton wrote:
> I'm looking for a boot manager that allows me to have multiples OS
> partitions on my C drive, but with the inactive partitions hidden, and
> an easy way to select the OS to boot when you turn on your system. I'm
> willing to spend some money to get a reliable and solid product.
> "Free" isn't as important as "works as advertised."


I've tried several free ones, including BootItNG (BING), SmartBoot, and
Grub. I'm currently using Grub because that's what came with my Linux
distro.

I liked SmartBoot the best, because it was easy to use. Grub is okay,
but you can only change its settings from within Linux.

Yousuf Khan

Christian Franke <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> Yousuf Khan wrote:
>>
>> I liked SmartBoot the best, because it was easy to use. Grub is okay,
>> but you can only change its settings from within Linux.
>>

> GRUB2 also supports a /boot/grub directory on a windows partition. GRUB2
> has native NTFS support and its tools build & run OOTB on Cygwin.

Ah, nice. I have used Grub for a long time now and I prefer
it over the alternatives. I have, however, allways had a Linux
installation to administrate it. Nice to know Grub2 removes
that limitation.

OOTB = Out Of The Box for the poster below ;-)

Arno

Timothy Daniels <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> "Arno" answered out of the blue:
>> Christian Franke wrote:
>>> Yousuf Khan wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I liked SmartBoot the best, because it was easy to use.
>>>> Grub is okay, but you can only change its settings from
>>>> within Linux.
>>>>
>>
>>> GRUB2 also supports a /boot/grub directory on a windows
>>> partition. GRUB2 has native NTFS support and its tools
>>> build & run OOTB on Cygwin.
>>
>> Ah, nice. I have used Grub for a long time now and I prefer
>> it over the alternatives. I have, however, allways had a Linux
>> installation to administrate it. Nice to know Grub2 removes
>> that limitation.
>>
>> OOTB = Out Of The Box for the poster below ;-)
>>
>> Arno

> In MY news reader, *you* are the poster below. :-)

Wups ;-)

> And, yes, it's good to hear about Grub2. Is it part of
> the normal Ubuntu distribution, now?

Debian is till on Grub 0.97 (i.e. 1) as default, but 1.96
(i.e. 2) is available as package in the standard distribution.
This means that Ubuntu should have it also.

I will probably move to Grub2 not to far into the future.

Arno