Partition Magic 6

Partition Magic v. 6.0

by Stephanie Nordlinger, LACS

PowerQuest’s Partition Magic has always done what it attempts to do. It neatly, cleanly, and reliably lets you partition a hard drive into two or more logical drives (represented by drive letters, such as C:, D:, and E:) that Windows will recognize. A physical drive is divided into segments (partitions) to help organize it (e.g., programs vs. data, one operating system vs. another), to make the logical drives smaller so your software can deal with them, or to obtain smaller minimum file sizes and thus more room on your drives.

Installation from its CD was a breeze. I installed PM on my new Dell Pentium 3 with a 40 MB drive in perhaps five minutes without any glitches, except for an error message when making rescue diskettes. I didn’t resolve that problem, but it didn’t seem to matter. PM contains its own Uninstall program.

When you boot up, you are warned to turn off all other software when using the program. I am new enough to Windows Me not to know exactly how much you can turn off, but I did disable the obvious things like Norton Protect, Norton Antivirus, and a few other programs. A screen consisting of several windows appears, with a Menu bar at the top and a wide bar showing various operations at the bottom. The left window at the center looks like Windows Explorer. In the center right window, a lot of graphical and numerical information on your drives appears. Physical drives are called disks and are numbered. Logical drives are called drives and have drive letters. (When you start, there will be only one, C: on Disk 1). Each drive is shown in a box that reflects its size. Each box contains yellow space (already used by files) and white space (empty). Each box is surrounded by a colored frame, which is keyed to a menu of types of drives, e.g., FAT, FAT-32, NTFS, Linux, etc. [FAT refers to File Allocation Table, a Windows standard]. Logical drives are shown in one or more aqua super-frames, representing Extended partitions. You can also see whether a partition is active or not, and whether it is primary (physical) or logical. Space not allocated to any drive is also shown.

The bottom of the main screen shows the more likely operations: Create New Partition, Resize Partition, Redistribute Free Space, Merge Partitions, Copy Partition, and Exit. After you have done one or more of these operations, you get two additional choices: Apply Changes and Undo Last Change. Additional things can be done via the pull-down menus, especially under Operations.

All files are stored in allocation units called clusters. No matter how small it is, each file must be assigned to unique clusters. Depending on your drive or partition size and operating system, your clusters (and thus minimum file size) may be from 512 bytes to 64 KB for the same 10-character ASCII file. This and previous versions of Partition Magic contain a graphical Resize Clusters feature that shows you how much wasted space will be present at various cluster sizes and lets you choose which file size you want. I used version 3 of PM to divide my previous computer’s 10 GB drive into nine or ten parts so as to minimize file cluster size. This time I decided to create four partitions: D: (a minimum sized placeholder because it would be replaced by my second hard drive later), E: for non-Microsoft and other programs that didn’t need or insist on being on the C: drive, and F: for data. I gave them meaningful file names. I also created G: as a FAT partition in case any of my legacy (pre-Windows 95B) software wouldn’t run on the other drives. I left some free space for what may someday become a Linux partition. To create a partition, you answer a few questions (size, type of partition, etc.). The process went very smoothly. To delete a partition, you go to Operations, Delete and just identify it. Be sure it is empty first!

After creating the new partitions, I put my 10 GB hard drive into my new computer to facilitate data transfer. This worked wonderfully. No cables, no special program, and at 1 GHz, the data moves very quickly. However, programs still need to be reinstalled on the new Windows Me registry. I haven’t tried it, but I don’t believe that Norton’s Cleansweep, or anything else, will move a program that has never been in the registry from my old Win 98 hard drive to my new Windows Me one. The insertion of my old drive automatically changed all of the later drive letters. If not corrected, shortcuts would not work and programs would have difficulty running. So, I deleted the empty placeholder drive D: (now E:).

Several weeks later, I decided to combine some of the nine or ten partitions on my old 10 GB disk. Partition Magic easily combines adjacent partitions (logical drives). Just answer simple questions: Decide what drives to combine, which one you want to be primary and which is to be a folder in the other, which folder you must name. You also choose the file format (e.g., FAT or FAT32). In one case, I was told that a particular drive didn’t have enough free space on it to do the combination, and was told exactly how much more space was needed. I set up two operations, each combining two drives. After clicking on Apply Changes, a series of progress bars appears. PM merges partitions, shifts data and checks the integrity of the new partition. It takes a little while if you have lots of data, but the time is not unreasonable. (Go to lunch.)

Version 6 has these new features: a new user interface, the ability to undelete partitions, a new Copy Partition wizard, the ability to view and modify a list of pending operations, support for Windows Me and Windows 2000 Professional (but not NT or Windows 2000 servers), and the ability to split a FAT or FAT32 partition. Partition Magic Pro provides across-the-wire support for performing some operations on a remote machine.

Before you apply changes, the screen tells you that DriveMapper is an included utility that will locate any drive letter references found in your INI files, Windows registry and shortcuts and can update them with the new drive letter. You can choose to run DriveMapper automatically right after applying the changes you have made. I chose to run it this time, but I deliberately chose not to run it after inserting my second hard disk, knowing that I would eliminate the placeholder drive. This kind of flexibility is wonderful. You always are given the chance to confirm or view your selections and to undo them. PM is safe to use if you are reasonably alert.

I also decided to change some of my old FAT partitions on my smaller drive to FAT32 to increase available disk space. (Now my “old” machine runs Windows 98, while before my older computer ran Windows 95A, which doesn’t work with FAT 32 partitions.) The procedure was easy to find and worked well. One drive went from 284 MB of unused space to 663 MB. Wow!

Partition Magic v. 6's 149-page manual is one of the best I have seen in years. It is well written, illustrated with screen shots, and well-indexed. Navigation in the program is easy. PM includes very good Help screens. Unlike Adobe Help screens, the answer you want is actually there, close at hand. A+.

PQ Boot is a quick and easy way to switch between bootable primary partitions for users who only occasionally change the active partition, and do not want to use Boot Magic. PQ Boot is included in PM, and can be run from the Windows Programs list or from DOS.

BootMagic is a separate included program on the PM CD. It creates a front-end file that lets you choose which primary bootable partition, and hence which operating system to use each time you boot up. I did not install it.

Partition Magic Pro is an enhancement designed for people who are responsible for other people’s computers in a corporate or a consulting environment. It includes Remote Agent software that allows an administrator or computer consultant to change partitions on another computer.

If you have a large hard drive, you may want to seriously consider partitioning it into logical drives. This may create more usable disk space and may facilitate backups of your data on fewer pieces of media. Using Partition Magic is much easier than using the underlying DOS utilities (which I have done), and the program is much more flexible. This well designed and easy-to-use program is well worth its price.