New Case Studies Added to Paragon Software’s Library

Vacation time is always a great time to get desktops refreshed in the education environment. If you are planning deployments and refreshes this spring, be sure to check out Technical High School Saves Time with Paragon Software’s Deployment Manager (Deployment Manager - Technical High School) in our Case Study Library.

We’ve also added a new case study spotlighting Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager. Colorado’s Fire Police Pension Association depends on Paragon Deployment Manager image-based backup for reliability and ease of use to safeguard its critical financial records: The Fire Police Pension Association of Colorado Chooses Paragon Software Hard Disk Manager for Reliable, Quick Image-based Disaster Recovery Software (Hard Disk Manager – Financial – FPPA of CO).

Go Virtual

Enjoy Working in a Virtual Computing Environment – Even if You’re Not Technically Savvy – with Paragon Software Group’s Go Virtual

Home users can now enjoy hazard-free benefits of virtualization; migration from PC to virtual machine is easy, reliable and free!

IRVINE, CA, July 12, 2010 – It’s time to upgrade to a new operating system, but the thought of all the unknown issues may hold you back.  What if your favorite applications haven’t been updated to work with the new OS? There may be unintentional software glitches or bugs that will damage your host computer. One solution would be to create a virtual clone of your current computing environment to test any changes or upgrades before going live on your own PC, but migration to a virtual machine might be too complex and expensive for an average home user. How do you even begin to go virtual?

Paragon Software Group (PSG), the technology leader in innovative data security and data management solutions, invites you to Paragon Go Virtual with the new easy-to-use, free migration tool created for PC users who want to work in a virtual environment without technical risk. How does it work? Paragon Go Virtual allows you to make a virtual clone of your PC in three easy steps: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/go-virtual/how_it_works.html

Working in a Physical to Virtual (P2V) environment has benefits.  Avoid negative system conflicts by creating a virtual clone of your current physical system before migrating to a new computer – try new software in a safe environment and decide whether it works and is exactly what you need before making it a permanent addition to your collection.  Or save your virtual environment to a USB hard drive and use it from anywhere at any time, just as if you’re working from your own PC.  With P2V, you can also take advantage of an up-to-date powerful computer while still having access to favorite applications from an old computer.  And, if your old computer is corrupted or you lose data in a transfer, but you have a backup image of your old system made with Paragon software, you can virtualize it using Paragon Go Virtual installed on your new PC.

Previously available only to businesses and advanced users, migration to a virtual machine — because of its complexity and high cost – could be time consuming and complicated for an individual PC user.  Individual users were often required to search for several third-party software tools, and then ensure that these tools were compatible with their new machine before completing the process.  Paragon Go Virtual quickly and efficiently solves these problems by providing a complete solution compatible with all major formats of known virtual machines, including Microsoft (Virtual PC), VMware (Fusion, Workstation, Player) and Oracle (VirtualBox).  Further, Go Virtual requires no additional tools for and after the migration process.

“Since most existing migration tools are aimed at businesses and professional users, Paragon came up with a quality solution for everyone to suit a wider range of users with simplicity, efficiency and the most reliable performance results.” said Konstantin Komarov, CEO. 

Key Features & Benefits:

• Full Windows OS Support – Guaranteed support for any Windows operating system since Win2K (excluding server editions).
• P2V Migration – Migrate a physical system to a virtual machine.
• Migration without rebooting Windows – Hot processing of locked (in-use) hard disks lets you migrate a computer without rebooting and interrupting Windows.
• P2V Adjust OS to recover the startup ability after unsuccessful virtualization with a 3rd party tool and to make Windows Vista/7 backups bootable on virtual hardware.
• Smart Driver Injector – Makes the process of adding new drivers smooth and easy.
• Performance – Paragon Go Virtual performs approximately 20% faster (your results may vary).
• Selection of virtual hardware – Go Virtual offers the user a selection of virtual hardware types. Freeware tools typically do not.
• Migration of offline systems – Freeware tools support the migration of operating systems currently running, but they have problems migrating offline operating systems, especially when there are more than one OS on the disk. Go Virtual performs these operations with ease.

Availability:

Paragon Go Virtual is available for immediate download, free of charge: http://www.paragon-software.com/home/go-virtual/index.html

Drive Copy 10 Giveaway

MakeUseOf.com is giving away 100 licenses of Drive Copy 10 Personal. Drive Copy is a great utility for upgrading hard drives, creating a single image of your computer for recovery if the PC crashes, and many others. If you would like to grab a free copy, head over to MakeUseOf.com and read the post.

Added Bonus:

They are giving away our personal version that will not work on servers.

If you would like a chance to win a copy of Drive Copy 10 Server, Go HERE.

A Major Problem With Solid State Drives (SSD)

The Misaligned partitions problem is even more important for SSD drives than for traditional hard disk drives. Many modern SSD drives have an internal memory page size 4096 bytes or larger accordingly to 4K size, which are some analogue for 4K sectors. Thus all previously mentioned problems are the same for SSD partitions alignment.

This issue of SSD misalignment was highlighted in a recent OCZ forum where it was stated:

Take note here, partition alignment with SSD is the most important factor you have to deal with when installing your new drive. Tuning the drive’s alignment can add 30 to 50% more performance so failing to apply the correct alignment could ruin the experience you have with the drive.

There is one crucial SSD issue besides file system speed decline (which is not so noticeable in comparison to traditional HDD). It is the SSD memory cells degradation after some amount of write operations. So if partitions on SSD are misaligned beside downgraded system speed you put your solid state drive in danger. After partitions alignment, PAT eliminates all redundant read/write operations and thus provides speed boost and grants the SSD a longer lifetime.

Is SSD alignment an issue for you? Find out here. Read the rest of Why Misaligned Partitions are a Problem for SSD.