Acronis os selector 8.0 User Manual

 

 

 

This chapter contains the following general information about Acronis OS 
Selector: 

The main function of a boot manager is to allow the user to install multiple 
operating systems on one computer and to choose the necessary one when 
the computer is booted. 

All boot managers can be divided into several complexity levels: 

1.  Boot managers that are able to boot an operating system by reading the 

boot sector from the first sector of a partition. These boot managers do 
not recognize file systems and hence cannot support multiple operating 
systems that are installed on one partition. They have the simplest user 
interface and occupy minimum disk space. The examples are OS/2 
BootManager and Linux’s LILO. 

2.  Boot managers that can load the boot sector from a file with a specified 

name. These usually are parts of an operating system (built-in boot 
managers) that are supposed to somehow help the operating system to 
co-exist with other operating systems. Built-in boot managers have the 
simplest user interface. Examples are: NT OS Loader. 

3.  Full-scale boot managers that can detect file systems (FAT), recognize 

different operating systems, and are able to automatically detect them. 
These boot managers are aware of system and configuration files of 
operating systems and are able to create backup copies of them, to allow 
the user to have multiple operating systems with same system file names 
or multiple copies of configurations of one operating system on one 
partition. Examples are: BootWizard 3.x, System Commander, BootIt. 

4.  Only Acronis OS Selector 8.0 can be put on the last, highest level of 

complexity. Unlike all other boot managers, it allows users to have 
multiple operating systems with same named system folders on one 

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