Problem loading Disk Director Suite 9 from floppies

Hi

I sent this to support@acronis.com as instructed on their home page, but it bounced, so maybe you guys can help out?

I have an IBM Thinkpad 600 with 128MB ram. It has a 4.1 GB HDD with two partitions, 1st is FAT32, 2nd is NTFS and it has W2K running with service pack 4. I want to 'downgrade' the OS to the smaller Windows Millennium, but first I need to change the NTFS partition that contains data files to FAT32 so that WinME will be able to read it (it cannot read NTFS).

I tried Disk Director Suite 9 demo which went through all the steps fine, except the actual commit. After that apparent success, last night I purchased the full version online and downloaded it.

I was disappointed that with the full version, when I pressed 'commit' after setting up the 'advanced' NTFS=>FAT32 conversion I was told that the software could not do it because 'the application is running on the disk'. With hindsight this is perhaps fair, though the partition 2 that I want to change is not in use as windows and Acronis is running on partition 1.

However, I thought all is not lost, I'll use the boot floppies (5 of them) - that should do it.

Now comes the next problem: After reading all 5 floppies the "Acronis Loading, please wait..." message remains on screen and the machine is hanging. I waited up to 25 minutes to see if anything would happen, but it did not.

Is there a solution to this please?

On the face of it, it seems like a case of returning the product as unsuitable. How do I do that with a downloaded purchase?

Thanks,

Phil

 

Hello Phil,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Director Suite (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/).

We are really sorry for the inconveniences.

First of all, please note that current version of Acronis Disk Director Suite doesn't allow you to convert NTFS to FAT32 without data loss. The only way is to format the partition in FAT32.

Also please note that the latest build of Acronis Disk Director Suite takes 6 diskettes for the "Full" version of Acronis Bootable Media and 2 diskettes for the "Safe" version.

If you use the "Full" version please press the F11 key when the selection screen (selection between the "Full" and "Save" verwsions) appears. After that you will get the "Linux Kernel Setings" screen. Please make the string look in the following way:

quiet acpi=off noapic

Press "Ok" and see whether you will be able to boot the computer. If you still have problems please get to the "Linux Kernel Settings" once again and remove all the words there (make it blank). After that please press the "Ok" button and write down the last strings of the output or use digital camera to make a digital photo. After that please send these files to support@acronis.com along with the link to this thread and indicate in the subject of the letter that you want to contact Marian Fadeeva.

Since the letters from your ordinary address are bounced please try using another e-mail address (for example you may get the free e-mail account at the http://www.yahoo.com).

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Does this mean that it cannot convert NTFS to FAT32? Obviously 'convert' implies that there is data in the partition otherwise one would simply reformat it.

If this is the case I want a refund, as the demo clearly demonstrated that ability, and that is the sole reason that I purchased it.

That's strange, I only downloaded the 'purchased online' version the other night. Does this mean you have given me an old version? If so can I please have an up to date one?

I presume this applies to the 'latest' version, so I will wait till you make that available to me.

I can't imagine that bouncing customers email is good for your business. Can you not get someone to fix your spam filter so it does not block email with obviously relevent subjuct lines. My subject line was the same as I used for this thread.

 

Hello Phil,

The problem with the e-mail delivery is unlikely to be in our spam filters. Could you please send me a private message with your e-mail address?

Could you please tell where you have seen the option to convert NTFS to FAT32 in the demo version?

You may download the latest (524) build of Acronis Disk Director Suite at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/support/updates/ after you register at http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/registration/ .

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Hi Ilya,

What address shall I use? - that's the problem, the one on your sig bounces!! I am using bigfoot.com; maybe you have that blacklisted. That would be reasonable, but you could add all registered users' addresses to your 'friends' list, thus allowing them in, ahead of any blacklist filtering.

Sorry, but I deleted the demo when I got the full version. As far as I recall, that conversion option was under "advanced" menu, probably as "Change Type". Or there may have been a "Change Type" toolbar button.

Thanks, I have downloaded this now, but not tried it yet.

Regards,
Phil

 

Hello Phil,

First of all, please note that the latest build of Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0 is 533 now (it was released several days ago).

I can assure you that there is no option to convert NTFS into FAT32 in demo or full version. You may uninstall the full one and download the trial one once again to make sure there is no this feature.

We do plan to implment this option into the future versions of Acronis Disk Director Suite and our Development Team is already working on it.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Dear Ilya,

I DID send an IM about this on this board to you, LowWaterMark and Paul Wilders.
So far none of you replied to my message. So be it

So here we go:
May I kindly ask you to read the current Readme.txt file for Disk Director Suite ?

C:\Program Files\Acronis\DiskDirector\readme.txt

The file <C:\Program Files\Acronis\DiskDirector\readme.txt> has the following Checksum(s)
MD5 - 88F7B92A96023AF7EB39B296BAAFA016

Be assured that I will add that file to my file integrity checker NIS File Check !

And here goes part of a copy of that file (please note that I did not write that file!!!):

=== begin quote ===
Welcome to Acronis Disk Director Suite 9.0

-------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (C) Acronis, 2000-2005.
All rights reserved.


Contents
----------
1. About Acronis Disk Director Suite
2. Supported operating systems
3. System requirements
4. Key features
5. User's Guide
6. About Acronis
7. How to contact us


1. About Acronis Disk Director Suite
---------------------------------------
Acronis Disk Director Suite is a complex software
that includes partition and boot managers and hard
disk data editing tools. With Acronis Disk Director
Suite you can:
- Create hard disk partitions,
- Resize and move them without data loss and destruc-
tion,
- Convert partitions to other file systems without
data loss,
- Copy (move) partition contents,
- Delete partitions,
- Recover hard disk partitions that were accidentally
deleted or damaged due to a hardware or soft-
ware error.
- Format, label, assign letters, hide and unhide
partitions, set active partitions and perform
rarely used operations.
- Install several different operating systems on a
single PC;
- Boot installed operating systems from any hard disk
partition;
- Boot installed operating systems directly from
Windows;
- Install several operating systems on a single par-
tition;
- Hide or protect with a password any operating sys-
tem on your PC;
- Duplicate installed operating systems and define
different configurations for each copy.
- Recover boot records, files and folders structure,
find lost clusters, remove viruses, etc.

=== end quote ===

Bold characters by me

Regards, Jan.

 

Hello FanJ,

Thank you for your interest in Acronis Disk Director Suite (http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/).

Please note that the summary cited is quite general. If you read the exact info concerning file system convertation you will find that Acronis Disk Director Suite is able to convert FAT32 into FAT16 (and vice versa) and Ext2 into Ext3 (and vice versa). This is stated in the User's Guide and the same is stated at our site http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/partitioning.html

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

Dear Ilya, and Paul and Mike,

All I can do, is bow my head in shame

Once again I was wrong, unfriendly and impatient ...

I am so sorry for having done what I did.....

Jan

 

Thank you. I have now found time to install this and am looking at it right now, running under WinME.

I have a dozen partitions on my drive (which happens to be a Raid 0, consisting of a pair of 120GB drives) and most are FAT32.

However, my 8th partition, labelled "XP_2" is NTFS prepared for WinXP. It has no volume letter assigned because WinME cannot recognise NTFS. If I select the "XP_2" partition, Disk Director Suite 9 (build 533) indicates in its left panel under "Details", "XP_2", and under that "FS: FAT32 Partition 0x7 (NTFS, HPFS)", and under that it says "File System: FAT32". I believe this last item refers to my currently running OS which is WinME running on a FAT32 partition.

If I now select from the menu "Disk=>Advanced=>Change Type" a pop-up appears with partition type "7h NTFS, HPFS" highlighted. This confirms that it is a NTFS partition. I now scroll down to “Type 0Bh FAT32", and click OK.

The "Details" item in the left panel has now changed to read "XP_2 (J", under that "FAT32", and under that it still says "File System: FAT32".

The "Commit" flag is active so Disk Director Suite 9 does appear to be willing to change this NTFS partition to type FAT32 contrary to your statement above. I do not intend to try it, as this is an area where there is clearly a conflict between what the actual software does, and what Acronis engineers expect.

The above sequence is identical to what I observed with your demo version, and reported here on 31st Jan, and in email which you bounced. As I explained, it was on the understanding that it would convert NTFS to FAT32 that I purchased Disk Director Suite 9.

I have attached a screen shot which makes all the above a lot clearer.

Can you now please clarify which of the following will occur if I was to press the COMMIT button:
1 The disk will be trashed
2 Nothing
3 The partition will be converted with data loss (a.k.a. trashed!)
4 The partition will be converted successfully

If the answer is any other than 4, I would be obliged if you will arrange a refund for me as the product will be unable to perform the function for which it was purchased and which was advertised in the demo exactly as I explained on 31st Jan.

Thank you

Phil

 

just a general comment, why convert? it's very impractical and even dangerous, it's much faster to move files to another partition, delete the partitions that have the wrong format and recreate them with the right format

not only is it safer (imagine a power outage halfway, ouch) but it's also *much* faster (try converting a fat32 to ntfs in winxp using the option built into winxp)

conversion is a mickey mouse feature in my opinion, except for bootdrives, where it *might* make sense, i simply cannot think of a situation where i would want to convert (except converting a boot fat32 windows xp to ntfs)

just out of pure interest: what is the purpose of this conversion?

 

Hello Phil,

What you did is you have changed some particular bytes with file system identification. This did not convert your file system. To convert the file system please choose the "Convert" tool in the "Advanced" tab as it is described in the User's Guide. In your case the choice of the file system will be limited to only one item: NTFS.

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

I see. I think you need to make it somewhat clearer in the GUI that "Change Type" does not 'convert' the file system, ONLY the tag!!! In the User's Guide you say?? NOBODY read User's Guides these days - the GUI is expected to be pretty much self explanatory and unambiguous.

Phil

 

blueznl, see my first post in the thread. The machine has virtually no spare space so the option of converting 'in situ' was the big attraction here (though it now seems not to be an option).

Anyway, I have now hooked it up to my network and copied the files across to another disk, so it no longer matters. What does matter is that the sole reason for buying DDS is that it appeared to offer this in situ conversion. I don't need Acronis otherwise, as I already have Partition Magic and that does all the other things that I need.

I can't believe Acronis would sell a product that was dangerous to your data, would they?