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PartitionMagic V.6.0
by Review by Dick Trissel—Central Coast Computer Club, Santa Maria, California December, 2000 http://member.apcug.org/fourseas/, rtrissel@slonet.org - December 18, 2000 at 14:50:05:
I doubt that there are many computer users that haven’t heard of PowerQuest’s PartitionMagic program. Any printed article that discusses hard drive disk management will recommend PartitionMagic. In this article, I will make you familiar enough with PartitionMagic 6.0 so that you can decide if this is something you can use.I admit that I am a skeptic. But, I was favorably impressed with the range of capability and ease of use of PartitionMagic 6.0. I’ve never used a previous version. There were times in the past when I needed to do a job that PartitionMagic would have done, but I, like many others, didn’t really know what all it could do.
In these days of large hard disk drives, it is almost imperative that the user has the capability of managing the drives. This is true whether it be to conform to the maximum partition size limited by the BIOS, or for the convenience and protection of separate (partitioned) areas on the drive.
Sure, we have the DOS (Oh No!) FDISK and FORMAT, but these are brutal and dangerous for the average user. There are specialized programs available that help relieve the complexity of hard disk drive management, but to have all the programs necessary would be expensive, cumbersome, and possibly dangerous to the disk content.
PartitionMagic 6.0 by PowerQuest puts all the tools in one package. And even though they warn that you should backup your drive’s content, they also say most of the options will not affect the disk content.
After installing PartitionMagic 6.0 on one of my drives (I have five on removable trays on two computer systems), I used the Wizards to resize the primary partition on one of my drives to create some unallocated space. I then created an extended partition. Because I have a CD-ROM in my system, Partition Magic asked if I wanted to fix all the references to my D drive (the CD-ROM) to the new letter E (D got replaced by the second partition). I agreed.
With all the changes displayed, I thought it was done. Nope, that was just what I had indicated it to do. Now, I had to tell it to actually do it. At that point, I could have backed out with nothing changed. That was comforting. However, I turned it loose, and everything was done as advertised with no damage done.
A very useful feature in PartitionMagic 6.0 is the ability to make “rescue disks.” These are two floppy disks with a Caldera DR-DOS version containing most of the features of PartitionMagic 6.0. Primarily they are for operating systems that are not Windows9x/ME/, or WindowsNT4.0/2000 workstations. However, they will work on almost all systems except WindowsNT/2000 servers. A few options are not available with the rescue disks, such as Remote Agent, split/shred/undelete partitions, undo, and the Wizards.
So, I used the rescue disks to undo all the changes I had made. I should mention I was working with an old disk with Windows98 and FAT16. So, after going back to a single partition, I told PartitionMagic 6.0 to make it a FAT32 disk. My disk now has a little more (usable) space, uses less space for new files, runs a little faster, and I never lost a byte.
On a system that I thought had a perfectly normal hard disk, PartitionMagic reported a discrepancy in the FAT cluster allocation. I don’t know what the problem was. PartitionMagic asked if I wanted it to fix the problem. With my fingers crossed, I told it to do it. It not only fixed it but also showed a small amount of unallocated space on the disk. I resized the primary partition to include it.
PartitionMagic 6.0 has too many features to go into any detail, and the technicalities are too extensive for this article. The 149 page User Guide gets pretty technical and, unfortunately, doesn’t have a glossary of terms. However, their Web site has a link to an online glossary that can be downloaded for future reference: http://www.powerquest.com/partitionmagic/index.html
If you buy PartitionMagic 6.0 in the box, it comes on a CD-ROM—loaded. If you download it from the Web site, it’s a 40MB Download. The list price for PartitionMagic 6.0 is $69.95 (check the special price at the end of this article). PartitionMagic 6.0 Upgrade list price is $29.95.
Here are the system minimum requirements:
• Windows 9x/ME/NT4
• 32MB RAM (64 for NT4)
• 50MB disk space
• 486 processor (Pentium 150 for ME, 133 for 2000)
• 3.5’ floppy drive
• CD-ROM (unless you download).
• PartitionMagic 6.0 includes support for FAT, FAT32, Linux ext 2, Linux SWAP, and NTFS partitions
What can you do with PartitionMagic 6.0? PartitionMagic allows you to create, resize, split, merge, undelete, and convert partitions without destroying data. PartitionMagic helps organize and protect your data, run multiple operating systems, convert file system types and fix partition table errors.
The task automation wizards will allow you to create, resize, merge, and copy partitions, and redistribute free space. PartitionMagic 6.0 also lets you change drive letters, retest bad sectors, hide partitions, resize the root directory, set active partitions, resize clusters, split partitions, delete and undelete partitions, and create bootable partitions. It also lets you visually see your hard drive structure. PartitionMagic includes BootMagic for multi-operating system Boot.
The three significant changes from version 5 are:
1) Allow the user to split a current FAT or FAT32 partition into two partitions and designate which root folders and files should be moved into the new partitions
2) “Drag and drop” a partition to another unallocated space on the hard drive
3) Restore partitions that have been accidentally deleted but not overwritten.
The manual references a program named Remote Agent that is only available with PartitionMagic Pro. This is a DOS program for running PartitionMagic on a network.
In my opinion, PowerQuest has attempted with PartitionMagic 6.0 to make hard disk management so simple and easy that even the “computer challenged” can do it. Read the User Guide, use the wizards, and it works.
Now, here’s the deal!—User group members may purchase PartitionMagic v6 at a special price of $30 by ordering from a secure web site at www.ugr.com/order/. Indicate the special code of UGEVAL00 with your order.
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