Sarasota PC Monitor
Partition Magic, Version 7.0
A Software Review
by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.This is the latest and greatest version of Partition Magic (PM). If you have ever used this software, then you know what I mean. This update is compatible with Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows ME and Windows 9X. It also works with the many different file systems used by these operating systems. That is, FAT, FAT32 and NTFS. It will also prepare partitions for use by Linux.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with PM and the term partitions, I will provide a short explanation of the usefulness of this software. With the large size of today's hard drives, the size of clusters determines the minimum size of any file. The larger the hard driver, the larger the cluster. For example, when using a FAT32 file system under Windows 98, a cluster is 4K or 4,096 bytes on a hard drive of 8GB or smaller. Above 8GB, up to 16GB, the cluster size is 8K. From 16-32GB, the cluster size is 16K. Above 32GB, the cluster size becomes 32K. That means that even a 1K file will take up a single cluster and on a 40GB drive, the file becomes 32K in size. I know that there are those who say that with a 40, 50 or 60GB drive, who cares about a few thousand bytes of lost drive space? Unfortunately, the time may come when even that size drive becomes full enough to worry about lost space. So that's where partitioning becomes important. If you divide a 30GB drive into two equal partitions, the cluster size would drop from 16K to 8K. That can be a substantial savings in storage space.
Another consideration is being able to back up your data files efficiently. If you partition your hard drive into a programs partition and a data partition, you can easily just backup the data. The advantage of Partition Magic is that you can change the partitions on your hard drive even after you have added programs and data. Of course, you can re-partition your drive with Windows. However, that requires using the FDISK and the Format programs, which will wipe all programs and data on your hard drive. Partition Magic will make these changes without affecting either programs or data.
I tested this version of PM on a Pentium II computer that had originally had Win95 installed. It had been upgraded to Win98 and they had replaced the hard drive with a 20GB drive. Because Win95 used FAT16, they partitioned the 20GB hard drive into six 2GB drives. This also left a large unpartitioned and unformatted space on the drive. Using PM I first converted each partition to a FAT32 partition. Then, I combined the partitions into an 8GB and two 6GB drives. This reduced the drive letters from the range of C-H to the range of C-E. It also made data handling much simpler.
This consolidation of the drives was accomplished using the graphic interface in Windows. PM allows you to make several changes like this without making any physical change to the hard drive. That way you can review what you have done and reverse it if necessary. Once you are certain you are ready to complete the process and actually change the drive setup, you click the "Apply Changes" button. PM will ask you to verify that you want to apply all the changes you have made and then the system will re-boot. All of the changes will be made at a DOS command prompt. You can follow the process by reading the onscreen messages. After all the changes have been made, PM will automatically boot the system back into Windows. Since PM uses its own version of DOS, it can run on WinMe, Win2000 and WinXP.
Since some application software was installed on other than the C drive in the original partitions, it was necessary to change the drive letter references in the registry and in various shortcuts. This is accomplished using DriveMapper. If you use the MergePartitions Wizard as I did, then you prompted to DriveMapper to update the drive references.
Overall, this partition merging went very smoothly. And, there was a considerable gain in usable space on the hard drive. The change to FAT32 allowed for usage of the full capacity of the 20GB drive.
Partition Magic 7 is the latest version in the series and shows some definite improvements in its function and its user interface. I have always found it to be very reliable and that hasn't changed. This is certainly a very useful application for anyone wishing to control the partitions on any large hard drive.
Partition Magic 7 is produced by PowerQuest Corporation. P.O. Box 1911, Orem, UT. URL: www.powerquest.com. The list price is $69.95 and the street price is $59.95 to $64.95. :
Copyright 2002. This article is from the January 2002 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/
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