## Settings Overview

The Settings dialog is available from the Main Menu: Tools > Settings. All the settings are grouped into several sections, which functions are described in the following paragraphs. The list of sections is placed on the left side of the dialog. By selecting a section from the list, you can open a set of options.

| To get a detailed description to any setting, control, or field of the program just click the hint button and then the object you need.

### General Options

This section contains a set of general options that will be taken into account during any operation carried out with the program:

· Partition Alignment mode. There are three options you can choose from:

- Legacy. DOS and Windows OSes before Vista required that partitions had to be aligned to the “disk cylinder” or 63 sectors to address and access sectors correctly. It was OK, until 4K hard drives came into scene. When partitions are aligned this way on this type of disk, each logical cluster is linked to two physical 4K clusters, thus resulting in a double read-write operation.

- Vista. Since Windows Vista, operating systems do not use the archaic CHS (cylinder/head/sector) addressing scheme, but the Logical Block Addressing (LBA), where sectors are addressed continuously over the whole disk drive. It is optimal for both, 512B and new 4K disk drivers.

- Inheritance. Select the option to disable automatic alignment of partitions.

· Check FS integrity policy. Accomplishment of any data-sensitive operation (resize, move, merge, redistribute, change cluster size, etc.) is potential with data loss. To minimize this risk, it’s recommended to check integrity of your file system before this type of operations, despite the fact that it’s quite time consuming. We offer you several options to let you choose, which is best for you:

- Always. Maximum protection, but minimal performance. The file system integrity will be checked each time it’s necessary to guarantee the maximum protection for the on-disk data.

- Once. Standard protection with acceptable performance. The file system integrity will be checked for each volume only once just before accomplishing data-sensitive operations.

- Never. No protection, but maximum performance. If you’re not 100% sure your disk is rock solid, please do not use this option.

· Data Loss Protection mode. To guarantee safety for your information when a data-sensitive operation has been abruptly interrupted as a result of a computer reset, or a power outage, there are several techniques, that correspond to the options below:

- Do not protect. No protection, but maximum performance. If you’re not 100% sure you’re completely safe from a power outage, or an accidental reset of your computer, please do not use this option.

- Reset. Standard protection with acceptable performance. Maintaining a special journal, our program enables to automatically complete a data-sensitive operation interrupted by an accidental reset of your computer from our bootable recovery media, thus reviving the corrupted partition.

- Power loss. Maximum protection, but minimal performance. Besides journaling, our program will also disable cache of your disk when accomplishing data-sensitive operations to avoid data loss even in case of a power outage.

### General Copy and Backup Options

This section contains a set of options that will be taken into account during copy and backup operations:

· HDD raw processing. Mark the checkbox to copy/back up a hard disk in the sector-by-sector mode, thus ignoring its information structure (e.g. unallocated space or unused sectors of existing partitions will be processed as well). This can help to avoid problems with hidden data created by certain applications or the system administrator. However, it will take more time to accomplish the operation.

· Partition raw processing. Mark the checkbox to copy a partition in the sector-by-sector mode to successfully process unknown file systems. However it is not recommended to enable this option when working with supported file systems as it takes more time to accomplish the operation.

· Skip OS auxiliary files. Mark the checkbox to skip OS auxiliary files (like pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, etc.), thus reducing the operation time and the resulted size of the backup image.

· Automatic BCD Update. Unmark the checkbox to suppress automatic update of BCD (Boot Configuration Data) after copy/restore operations.

### Hot Processing Options

In this section you may configure the hot processing mode:

· Enable hot processing. Mark the checkbox to enable the so called hot data processing mode that is specially designed to process data without restarting your operating system.

· Hot processing technology. From the pull-down list you can select the required hot processing technology.

· Always use hot processing. Select the option to process partitions without making them locked. Thus you will be able to keep working with them as usual.

· Use hot processing only when partition is locked. Select the option to use the hot processing only when partitions are locked and cannot be processed without restarting the computer. Please keep in mind, that once you start any operation on a partition in this mode, it will automatically be locked by the program, thus you won't be able to keep working with it as usual.

· Hot processing temporary drive. Here you can select a disk drive that will be used to store the temporary hot backup data (by default – C:).

· Attempts to start VSS. Here you can set how many attempts to start Microsoft VSS the program is to do before automatically rebooting the system and accomplishing the operation in a special boot-up mode.

· Timeout between attempts (in seconds). Here you can set a time period between different attempts to start Microsoft VSS.

· Switch between hot processing technologies. Mark the checkbox to automatically switch between Paragon Hot Processing and Microsoft VSS if one of them is unavailable at the moment.

### Partitioning Options

This section contains a set of options that will be taken into account during partitioning operations:

· Request confirmation before partition deletion. Mark the checkbox to activate an additional security mechanism. Thus when going to delete a partition you will be automatically requested to enter its label.

· Request confirmation when converting FAT16 to FAT32. Mark the checkbox to automatically request confirmation before converting FAT16 to FAT32. There are a number of situations when this kind of conversion is the only way out to accomplish the operation. For instance, you are going to migrate your system to a larger hard disk with the proportional resize of existing partitions, what is very convenient. As a result you can get original FAT16 partitions go beyond the 4GB limit. Thus without conversion to FAT32, this operation will in no way be possible to accomplish. The same goes for any copy hard disk/partition or restore hard disk/partition operation involving an extra upsizing.

### E-Mail Options

This section contains a set of options that will be taken into account during the Send log files and Send e-mail notification operations:

· Outgoing mail server (SMTP). To send messages by using the built-in mail client, it is necessary to have access to a computer running an SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server. All outgoing messages are first sent to the SMTP server, which in its turn delivers them to the required recipients. The address may be represented as a traditional Internet host name (e.g.: mail.com) or as an IP numeric address (e.g. xxx.xxx.xxx.xx).

· User e-mail address. Specify an e-mail address that has been assigned by the Internet Service Provider or organization's e-mail administrator.

· My outgoing server requires authentication. Activate the option to allow the program to make authentication on the server before sending messages.

- User name. Enter the name that will be used to log in to the e-mail account.

- Password. Enter the password that will be used to access the mail server.

When you’re ready with the settings, click on the Send test e-mail button to check if everything is OK.

### Virtual Mode Options

In this section you may configure the virtual mode:

· Allow virtual mode. Mark the checkbox to enable the virtual mode. It is an effective way of protection from any troubles, since no operation will be executed until confirmation, thus giving you a second chance to weigh all pros and cons of this or that particular operation.

| We strongly recommend you to enable this mode.

· Close progress dialog automatically. Mark the checkbox to automatically close the progress dialog after accomplishing operations.

### File System Conversion Options

This section contains a set of options that will be taken into account when converting FAT and NTFS file systems. By default, the program takes locale (regional) settings from the system. Problems might occur however because of different standards for file names and file time stamps (Created, Modified and Last Access Time) of NTFS and FATxx file systems.

To tackle problems of that kind you can manually set:

· Time zone to use during the convert operation. NTFS keeps file timestamps in GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) while FAT uses a fixed local date and time. The program takes proper account of these differences and enables to adjust timestamp values.

| An incorrectly chosen time zone might lead to inability to launch certain software.

· Language for file names to use during the convert operation. NTFS stores file names in Unicode while FAT/FAT32 uses ANSI to save short file names (also called the DOS aliases). The codepage information is required for the correct conversion of non-English file names from Unicode to ANSI and vice versa.

| An incorrectly chosen codepage will certainly result in corruption of non-English file names.

· Request confirmation of settings before NTFS < - > FAT/FAT32 conversion. Mark the checkbox to automatically display the local settings dialog to check and modify (if necessary) the default parameters before launching the convert file system operation.

### Log Files Options

In this section you can specify a storage life span for the stubact.log file:

· Infinite not to empty the file ever;

· Minimal to have the file emptied all the time;

· Custom to set a certain storage life span for the file. Please note, once the defined period has been expired, the file will be emptied.

| We strongly recommend you not to choose the Minimal option, as in case of having problems with the program, our Support Team won’t be able to study operation logs, thus help you out.