Paragon Hard Disk Manager review

Paragon Software Group is a German software company specializing in hard drive management, file system, and disk cloning software. It was founded in 1994 by a group of students from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, including current CEO Konstantin Komarov. The company is currently headquartered in the city of Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany.

The company offers many products for home and enterprise use, including the Paragon Hard Disk Manager which enables users of Windows-powered PCs to back up data seamlessly and recover them at any time. There are separate versions of the Hard Disk Manager for personal and commercial use, with the latter more advanced and expensive.

Paragon Hard Disk Manager: Plans and pricing

Unlike many competitors, Paragon doesn’t offer a free trial for its Hard Disk Manager. You must pay for a subscription before you can download and use the software. The Home version costs $80 for a lifetime license covering up to three personal computers. 

The Business version is considerably more expensive, costing $99 for a license that covers only one computer. It’s also the only version that comes with a 30-day free trial period. 

Paragon offers a separate license if you want to use the Hard Disk Manager on a Windows server. But, there's no fixed price for it, so you'll have to contact the company's sales team for a personal quote. 

You can pay on the official website through many options, including a credit/debit card, PayPal, wire transfer, and check/money order. If you’re not satisfied after your purchase, there’s a 30-day window to request a full refund by contacting the company’s support team.  

Paragon Hard Disk Manager: Features

This software offers many practical features, including;

You can back up individual files and folders from your computer by uploading them to external storage devices (e.g., USB disks, CDs, DVDs) or cloud storage services. You can also back up your entire system in one go.

This backup software option supports three types of backups; full, incremental, and differential backup. Full backup, as the name suggests, implies backing up all the data in a device by sending it to another location. Incremental backup refers to backing up all files that have changed since the last backup occurred, while differential backup entails backing up only copies of all files that have changed since the last full backup. 

Managing backups can be tough, especially for enterprise users. To make it easier, Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager enables users to schedule backups ahead of time and have them perform automatically regardless of if they’re present or not. This feature is more critical for enterprise users, where IT staff responsible for frequent backups may be on vacation or not physically present for many possible reasons.

This software employs encryption to protect your backup files from leaks or unauthorized access. You can set a password to prove additional protection for specific backup files. This way, even if a malicious actor somehow makes their way into your system, they won’t be able to extract the backup files. 

Similarly, Hard Disk Manager employs compression techniques to reduce the size of backup files as much as possible. This feature helps users save storage space and, consequentially, costs. To ensure you’re always in touch with the backup process, you can set up the program to notify you by email of every successful completion and/or failed backup. 

Restoring files through Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager is as easy as backing them up. You can choose separate files or folders to restore from existing backup jobs, restore entire hard disk or partitions, restore with resizing, and restore files to an original or new location.

Disk partitioning refers to dividing a hard disk into one or more regions called partitions that you can manage separately. This software helps you do this so that you can manage your files more easily.

You can perform basic partitioning, which entails creating, formatting, deleting, hiding, and assigning files or converting them from one form to another. Likewise, you can also perform advanced partitioning, which involves more complex operations like changing cluster sizes, redistributing free space, splitting/merging, and surface checks.

You can employ this software’s backup and restore function to migrate data from one device to another. Let’s say, you purchase a new laptop and need to retrieve all the files on your old laptop, just back them up on the old one and restore them on the new one. 

Likewise, this platform also provides a feature to wipe old devices clean after transferring data to a new device.

Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager lets users create bootable drives for their devices. Bootable drives are external storage mediums, such as a USB stick, from which a computer can load an operating system or utility program. You’ll need one in case your computer can’t boot normally due to errors. 

Paragon Hard Disk Manager: Interface and use

This software packs an interface that’s pretty easy to understand. The UI is modern and responsive, making it easy to navigate. Customer reviews often highlight user-friendliness as one of the pros of using Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager. 

Paragon Hard Disk Manager: Support

Paragon Software provides an array of direct and indirect support resources. You can access detailed documentation concerning the software on the official website alongside a Knowledge Base with user guides and manuals. There’s also a support forum where users interact and exchange solutions to their problems.

If these resources aren’t enough, you can proceed to open a support ticket through your account and wait for an email response. 

Paragon Hard Disk Manager: The competition

Popular alternatives to Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager include Acronis Cyber Protect and EaseUS Todo Backup. These alternatives support both the Windows and macOS operating systems, making them a better option than Paragon’s product that’s only limited to Windows users.     

Paragon Hard Disk Manager: Final verdict

There’s not much that makes Paragon’s Hard Disk Manager stand out from the competition except user-friendliness. The platform offers features that you can find on many other alternatives, some of which are more affordable. Being exclusive to Windows users also limits its reach and appeal compared to the competition.   

We've also highlighted the best disk cloning software.