Acronis compatible "multi-boot manager" - please advise me.

I very recently discovered that standard Microsoft Dual Booting is not the only game in town.

Now my laptop suddenly has a large HDD, I like the idea of having several different System Partitions and the ability to choose which to boot into.

Google gave me 3,710,000 results for multi-boot.
I got it down to 31,100 with
freeware "multi-boot manager"

I would appreciate specific recommendations,
and also advice upon selection criteria.

I am aware that :-
some products live in track zero, and others in a DOS partition;
some products hide inactive system partitions, and some require different drive letters.

I especially require information upon whether any particular location might conflict with the recently installed Boot-up option to boot into/with Acronis Secure Zone.

In addition to Acronis compatibility, I would like :-
1. The active partition to be C:\
2. Freeware
3. The non-active system partitions to have alternative letters, OR be hidden
4. If Hidden I hope I could then "Mount" them as alternative drive letters.

Any advice upon any aspect of the above will be welcome

Regards
Alan

 

I don't really know much about multi-booting and never cared for the idea but I think it might be good if you specified which OSes you plan to use in your efforts since it may impact on the recommendations.

 

My immediate wish is two instances of Windows XP Home edition with SP3,
a "Latest" and a "Previous".

In the future I may wish to try linux, but I may never get around to that,
and for the easiest simplest way of merely dual booting two instance of XP I am more than happy to abandon linux as a possibility

"Latest" is the current instance for normal use.
"Previous" will be a destination target for restoring an earlier T.I. image of "Latest".

My intentions towards "Previous" include :-
1. Restore to it the "Latest" image immediately after creation, and boot into "Previous" to prove the image is bootable;
2. Restore any past image so I may quickly compare operation of an application before and after an update;
3. To compare files and folders with "Latest" before creating a new T.I. image, so I may detect and delete from "Latest" any unwanted junk that may have accumulated since the last T.I. image;
4. Boot into "Previous" to install something new and test whether I want it to be a permanent part of "Latest".

I assume the bootmanager will Hide the inactive partition - or do some managers allocate a "spare" drive letter ?
When I wish to see/copy/compare files/folders on a hidden partition,
I think I will mount it as drive X:\ rather than unhide and set as X:\, but welcome advice.

N.B. System Restore notices when the External HDD is not switched on at start-up.
Upon the next Start-up with the External HDD switched on then S.R. gobbles up GBytes as it includes monitoring of all the external partitions.
I get quite annoyed having to individually disable monitoring of each partition yet again. I am hoping that X:\ will escape monitoring if it is only mounted.

Regards
Alan

 

The obvious response if you want Acronis compatability is to use OS Selection part of Acronis Disk Doctor.

I have used this with 2 versions of Windows XP, something you mentioned.

There is a trial that you can use. It works but I still prefer separate disks.

So I use on my desktop a hard disk caddy with disks for WIN98, XP,Windows 7 and various flavours of Linux.

On my laptop I have a several hard disks which I just swap out.

 

Thank you

I was not aware of a "free" Acronis version.

The 15 Second delay after a trial period may be acceptable. Please advise, when does this apply ?

I prefer that under normal conditions of no manual intervention, and default of booting into "Latest" partition,
the multi-boot manager should not greatly extend the delay between switching on and launching applications.
I will however be happy to accept a 15 second delay penalty whenever I invoke booting to the non-default partition.

I also look forward to alternative recommendations.

Additional criteria that may influence my final choice are :-
how large is the code;
where is it held;
how easy is it to un-install if I do not like it.
I am very happy to use something that lives in Track zero and is perfectly un-installed by restoring a previous track zero.

Regards
Alan