AOMEI Dynamic Disk Manager Pro Edition 1.1

Overview

AOMEI Dynamic Disk Manager Pro is a powerful software that allows you to perform operations on dynamic disks and volumes. It is packed with advanced features like creation, deletion, formatting and resizing of dynamic volumes, conversion of basic disks to dynamic disks (and vice-versa) as well as conversion of basic disks from GPT to MBR. The user-friendly environment makes it easy for beginners and a pleasure for experts to work in.

Installation

The setup procedure consists of a few steps only, which don’t have any advanced settings anyways. In one of them you can see details regarding the program and its functionality, and that’s probably the most interesting step since the rest are just a matter of clicking “Next”. No additional software a contained in the program (harmful or not), so you can go ahead and install it without worries.

AOMEI DDM works smoothly under Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7 and 8 (it’s compatible with both 32 and 64-bit editions).

Interface

The program has a sleek interface with everything that it should have, nothing more and nothing less. There’s a list on the upper part of the window with all the available disks/volumes, and you can see general information about them on the area below. On the side is a pane with two categories: General Operations and Wizards. The first category has only one option and that is for managing the selected disk, whilst the second category lists a few wizards for guiding you on performing different tasks (create volume, add drive to RAID, etc.). Clicking on the first category’s item will launch AOMEI Partition Assistant (which can be downloaded as a standalone program too), and from there you can choose the action you want to take for your disk. Its interface is very similar to the main program’s and not confusing at all.

Pros

With DDM you can easily create, delete, format and resize volumes, or you can create new partitions in your disks and assign them labels and drive letters. The wizards make it easy for the inexperienced user to create a new volume (either simple, spanned, stripped or mirrored), add a drive to RAID/remove drive from RAID and last but not least, move volume slices.

The Partition Assistant offers even more options, such as copying disks/partitions, migrating your operating system to SSD or HDD and recovering lost or deleted partitions. Moreover, you can perform several additional operations on your disks; e.g. delete all partitions, allocate free space, wipe hard drive, test the disk’s surface, convert to GPT/MBR, convert between basic and dynamic disk and several others.

Cons

No cons here.

Alternatives

EaseUS Partition Master (free & paid) is a utility for managing your partition and has a wide range of features, most of which can be found in AOMEI DDM too. An important advantage of EaseUS PM is that it has a backup feature, unlike DDM. Other alternatives are GParted (free), Parted Magic (free) and MiniTool Partition Wizard (paid).

Conclusion

AOMEI Dynamic Disk Manager Pro is recommended to those who want to use it multiple times, for different reasons. It has a significant number of tools that won’t disappoint you.