 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Using PowerQuest PartitionMagic 4.0 Ash Nallawalla ash@melbpc.org.au |
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PartitionMagic (PM) is now at v4.0 and this is a brief report about my experiences with this version. PowerQuest continues to make this tool easier to use. PM is a tool for dividing your hard disk into a more efficient solution. This includes changing the type of file format, such as NTFS, HPFS, FAT16, FAT32, and so on; adding one or more partitions, say, to run more than one operating system.
This software is not for the absolute novice. If you are aware of the fdisk program and its role, this program starts where fdisk stops and does a lot more. Chances are, if you bought a Win 98 PC recently, it may be formatted as FAT32, which is quite an efficient storage format. You may, however consider dividing your large drive into smaller partitions, say, to dabble with Be, Linux or Windows NT. Although you could use fdisk, you will find PM painless by comparison.
In use
I will describe an actual application of PM, on the PC Update test machine. It is a 300 MHz Pentium with a 6 GB drive. I also have my own 2 GB drive in it. The latter was badly organised, with two 128 MB, FAT16 partitions (drives E: and F:) and the rest as FAT32 (drive D:).
I needed to split the new 6 GB drive to run two operating systems. It already had Win 98 (2 GB partition in FAT32 format) and I wanted to run NT Workstation and possibly NT Server, too.
False starts
Ignoring the manual, apart from a cursory glance, I installed PM, which was a simple operation. I liked the new Windows interface, whereas an earlier version I had used was DOS-based, with a Windows look.
My first decision was to take up 2 GB from the large drive and format it as NTFS. This was very fast. The new interface is easy to drive--you choose your options, then you click the Apply button. The machine restarts in DOS mode and does its thing, which includes running DriveMapper, a supplied program that finds and fixes drive letter assignments, so programs continue to run after they have been "moved" to a new drive letter.
I also made a 700 MB drive that would be used as a CD image drive for the CD writer. This came in handy while I re-organised my own 2 GB drive and needed temporary storage for those files. But back to the 6 GB problematic drive.
The problem was that NT 4.0 Workstation (NT4WS) refused to install properly. It wouldn't even start the installation from its CD-ROM, as it didn't recognise the FAT32 on Drive C, but it was fine when started from its boot floppies. It would go through what seemed like an installation, but the reboot always hung. Upon examining the new partitions, I noticed that I had two active partitions. "No problem," I thought, and made one inactive. Still no go, as it hadn't been a complete installation.
The Prepare for New Operating System Wizard was getting confused, and
so was I. Jumping ahead several attempts later, I decided to read the manual.
The right way
The solution was to turn my 2 GB C: partition to FAT16. (Note that this is not a PM problem, but that of two flavours of Windows.) PM was used to make the conversion. Now, NT4WS installed directly from its CD-ROM, as it happily used the C: drive for temporary files. This problem needs to be better emphasised in the PM manual, although it alludes to it. I also used FAT16 for the NT partition, as this allows the drive to be seen from the other operating system. It is inefficient, I know, but when NT 5.0 (Windows 2000) is released sometime next year, it will handle FAT32 and there will not be a need to run Windows 98.
Conclusion
PartitionMagic 4.0 makes hard-disk management a breeze, although reading its
documentation thoroughly is highly recommended.
Reprinted from the March 1999 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group,
Australia
