Partition Magic 7.0

by Bob Kyle
April 2003

My review is on Partition Magic, Version 7. Version 7 was the release provided for review, but I have added a few comments pertaining to the recently released version 8 to make this review more current.

Before I start that review, let’s cover some basics about hard drive partitions: Generally, personal computers purchased today appear to come with a single hard drive and that hard drive is defined as drive C:\. (See Note 1) If you have a large 30 gigabyte IDE or SCSI hard drive, the whole 30 gigabytes might be defined as the C:\ drive. In this example there is one “physical hard drive” and it is also the only “logical hard drive”.

With tools like Partition Magic, you can subdivide a single “physical” hard drive into multiple “logical” drives. For example, you might use Partition Magic, to reduce drive C:\ to a 10 gigabyte “primary partition” and, in the remaining drive space, create an “extended partition”. Within the extended partition you might then create a 15 gigabyte drive D:\ and a 5 gigabyte drive E:\. You would then have one physical 30 gigabyte hard drive which was subdivided into 3 logical drives: drive C:\ in the primary partition, and drives D:\ and E:\ in the extended partition. A partition might be defined as a contiguous area of a hard disk that is organized under the same file system, like FAT32, NTFS or HPFS.

Your operating system has to be in a primary partition and only one primary partition can be ‘active’ at a time on the same computer. Generally, drive C:\ is your active primary partition if you are only using one operating system. If you have multiple operating systems on the hard drive, they will be in separate primary partitions, but only one of them will be ‘active’ at one time. When one primary partition is active, the other primary partitions are typically not accessible. See Partition Magic, version 7 Screenprint below.

Note 1: Actually, many personal computers sold to the general public come with a single physical hard drive subdivided into two partitions; drive C:\ plus a second partition that is hidden. That hidden partition contains much, if not all, of the operating system and preloaded applications. This hidden partition allows the purchaser with computer problems, to reset his system back to its original configuration, usually with just a boot diskette. This eliminates a lot of expensive technical support. You can find that hidden partition with Partition Magic.

In the screenprint, we see a system that has two hard drives installed. The first is a 6+ gigabyte hard drive containing drive C:, which is the “active” drive on this system. The second hard drive is 28.6+ gigabytes with drive D:\ defined as 10 gigabytes in a primary partition and, in an 18.6+ gigabyte “extended partition,” you have drives E:\, F:\, and G:\. All the drives on this system were formatted with FAT32.

Partition Magic is the Swiss utility knife for setting up and modifying hard drive infrastructures like the above example. You could use Partition Magic to create, resize, split, delete, undelete, copy, and merge partitions. All versions of Partition Magic work with the standard IDE and SCSI internal hard drives, and Version 7 will also work with external drives connected to your system through a USB port. The new version 8 extends that ability to work with external drives connected through USB2 and Firewire.

Once you have the partitions you want, use Partition Magic to test, format, or even hide a partition. You can also change cluster size, convert a partition to a different file system, boot among multiple operating systems, validate all drive references in the system, and more. Some of what Partition Magic offers can be accomplished using other tools such as the old DOS utility FDISK.EXE; so why would you want to spend $60 to $70 for a tool like Partition Magic? I can think of many reasons:

1. Partition Magic allows you to set up partition maintenance in a familiar Microsoft® Windows graphical environment. If you are not comfortable working with DOS level utilities, no longer have easy access to DOS, or you’re unfamiliar with utilities such as FDISK or the concepts behind hard drive infrastructures, Partition Magic is your tool.

2. If you follow the recommendations in Partition Magic and create a Recovery Disk, even in the unlikely event that you mess up your hard drive, the Recovery Disk will generally allow you to back out changes you have made to your drive’s internal structure.

3. Except for deleting partitions, Partition Magic is a nondestructive utility. You can change file structures, split an existing partition or move free space without damage to an existing partition, or the applications and data contained in that partition. Try doing that with FDISK!

4. Partition Magic comes with some neat additional tools. Do you know how to put multiple operating systems on the same drive? Partition Magic makes the whole process easy with an included utility called BootMagic, and an associated wizard that will walk you through the whole process of installing multiple operating systems on your system. Version 8 also comes with a handy file browser that allows you to copy or move files or folders between partitions. For a limited time, PowerQuest is also including DataKeeper with version 8. DataKeeper is an incremental backup program that runs in the background and can be configured for continuous backup of important data.

5. Another handy utility that comes with Partition Magic is called DriveMapper. This utility corrects disassociations created by changing drive assignments. For example, if you merge drives C:\ and D:\, DriveMapper will correct any erroneous system references to applications, folders, and files that use to be on drive D:\.

6. Partition Magic provides a preview of changes to your hard drives structure before you execute. It will show you a comparative disk map, which is a graphical ‘before’ and ‘after’ picture, with supporting information. A comparative disk map of your hard drives structure makes the current structure and consequences of any changes easier to understand and validate.

7. Partition Magic does its magic by means of batch processing. For example, you might tell Partition Magic to take a new drive, add a primary and extended partition, then within the primary and extended partitions add some new logical drives, and then format the new drives using NTFS. This process might take awhile, especially with today’s very large drives. With Partition Magic you can easily define the whole process, confirm the changes as presented in a disk map, click the Apply button and go wash the cars with confidence that it will be done correctly. Partition Magic will apply the changes and automatically reboot the system so that the changes can be recognized by the operating system.

8. Wizard buttons at the bottom of the main screen will easily walk you through the following processes:

a. Create a new partition;
b. Resize partitions;
c. Redistribute free space.

For example, if you have two logical drives, C:\ and D:\, and one drive is running short of free space and the other drive has excess, a wizard will safely reallocate that free space among the two drives;

d. Merge Partitions.

Partition Magic will merge two adjacent FAT or FAT32 partitions. You choose the two partitions and the first will be expanded to include the second. The contents of the second partition are added as a folder inside the first partition;

e. Copy Partition.

The Copy function is not designed to replicate the contents of one partition to another existing partition. This function is actually a cloning process designed to create a whole new partition that replicates the original. When you copy a partition using the wizard, you specify the hard drive and the unallocated space where you want to place the copy. You also get to select the partition type (primary or logical) and whether the partition will be hidden or unhidden. You can keep the partition the same size as the original copy (or slightly different if copied to another physical disk with a different geometry), or you can resize the partition to the size you want. This copy process can create some unwanted consequences.

For example, it can change your drive assignments and it may resize neighboring partitions to make room. To address the changing drive assignments issue, Partition Magic allows you to make the new partition ‘hidden’, which leaves the drive assignments unchanged.

9. And, as already mentioned, Partition Magic has the ability to manage partitions on external drives.

Although it is fairly easy to use and generally safe, I would recommend that partition tools, such as Partition Magic, be used with some care; you can get yourself into trouble. Power failures or system crashes in the middle of partition maintenance, merging of two primary partitions containing different operating systems and other problems, could render your system unbootable. Before making extensive changes to your hard drives, I would recommend that you follow the advice in Partition Magic to create backup and recovery diskettes containing essential recovery tools and information about your hard drives. Those wanting absolute insurance might also do a full drive backup using tools like Norton Ghost® or PowerQuest’s Drive Image® before playing with your partitions.

Partition Magic, version 7.0 was released in August 2001 and supports hard disks up to 80 gigabytes in size. Version 8.0 supports hard disks up to 160 gigabytes and also supports Linux Ext3 partitions and GRUB. Partition Magic is a great disk partition tool. I would recommend Partition Magic version 7.0 or 8.0 to those of you who no longer consider themselves PC neophytes and are interested in pushing boundaries. It is probably not a tool you will use frequently, but when you need to work with disk partitions, you would be hard pressed to find a better utility. The list price of Partition Magic 8.0 is $69.95.

The product supports the following Operating Systems: Windows XP Professional/Home Windows 95b - 98SE, Me Windows 2000 Professional NT 4.0 workstation (SP6a) The following information is taken from the PowerQuest web site:

* Large hard drives may require additional system memory.

Product Information: Partition Magic 7.0 MSRP $69.95 www.powerquest.com

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