## 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:

· Enable data loss protection. Mark the checkbox to make the program work in the fail-safe mode (also referred to as the data-loss protection mode), which ensures reliability for operations by maintaining a special journal. In case of a hardware malfunction, power outage or an OS failure happened in the middle of a data-sensitive operation (resize, move, merge, redistribute, change cluster size, etc.), the program will ask to insert the bootable recovery media and automatically complete the interrupted operation, thus reviving the corrupted partition.

| It is strongly recommended to enable this option.

### Partitioning Options

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

· Enable 64 KB cluster size for FAT16. Mark the checkbox to enable 64KB clusters for FAT16 partitions. Thus you will be able to create FAT16 partitions up to 4GB in size

| Due to the maximum cluster size of 32KB for Windows 95/98/ME or MS DOS, FAT16 partitions larger than 2GB are not reliably accessible under these operating systems.

· 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.

### 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.

### 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.

### 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.

· Send e-mail notification on apply. Specify an e-mail to send notifications on the carried out operations.

- Send mail in HTML format. Activate the option to create messages in the HTML format instead of plain text.

- Send complete report after applying operations. Activate the option to create an in-depth report on the carried out operations and send it after performing the last operation.

- Send graphical view of the disk sub-system before and after apply. Activate the option to allow the program to attach two pictures of the disk layout made before and after the operation is completed.

| By clicking the link at the bottom of the window you can jump to the Operation Dependency Options.

### Operation Dependency Options

This section contains a set of options that will be taken into account when the Send e-mail notification on apply function is enabled. By marking/unmarking a checkbox opposite the required operation you can choose whether to receive an e-mail notification on its completion or not.

| You won't be notified if an operation requires the system restart.

### 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.

### Copy/Backup Exclude Options

In this section the program enables to specify what data should be automatically ignored during copy operations. You can filter certain files or folders either by the manual selection or by creating masks, what is more preferable. Thus you will be able to effectively manage contents of your partition/hard disk copies.

By default, there are no available filters. To create a filter, please click the Add Category… button.

In the opened dialog the program allows the user to define the following parameters:

· Name. Give to the filter any name you like, but try to use an informative one;

· Filter. Press the Browse button to select files or folders you would like to be excluded or specify a filter mask by using * or ? wildcards;

· Description. Add a short description to the filter not to miss it up later.

Click the OK button and you will get a new item on the list of filters. By marking/unmarking a checkbox opposite its name you can choose whether to use it or not.

| By clicking the link at the bottom of the window you can jump to the General Copy and Backup Options.

### Defragmentation Options

In this section you may set the preferable defragmentation mode:

· Fast mode. Partitions will be defragmented rather fast (a 10-30% gain depending on the fragmentation level), but a power outage, hardware malfunction or a system failure during the operation might lead to the data loss.

· Safe mode. To guarantee protection of your data during the operation, the program will allocate some free space (not less than the on-disk largest file) on the defragmented at the moment partition to make a duplicate of every processed file. Thus we strongly recommend you to use this very mode.