Best replacement for Partition Magic?

[Larc]

This might be slightly OT, but probably not much.

I relied on Partition Magic for years, but am a little wary of it now
since Norton (Symantec) got their grubby hands on it. Their programs
seem to scatter files all over the hard drive that are next to
impossible to get rid of completely. What's the best partition
program to use other than PM?

Thanks for your help.

Larc



§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§

 

[Skybuck Flying]

Forget partitions, way to dangerous.

Use File Disk Images, and the File Disk tool, at least, that is, if you
using Windows.

Check it out.

Bye,
Skybuck.

 

[Conor]

This might be slightly OT, but probably not much.

I relied on Partition Magic for years, but am a little wary of it now
since Norton (Symantec) got their grubby hands on it. Their programs
seem to scatter files all over the hard drive that are next to
impossible to get rid of completely. What's the best partition
program to use other than PM?

BootitNG. Just don't install it to the HDD. Comes as a small ISO which
creates a bootable disk.

 

[John Weiss]

I relied on Partition Magic for years, but am a little wary of it now
since Norton (Symantec) got their grubby hands on it. Their programs
seem to scatter files all over the hard drive that are next to
impossible to get rid of completely. What's the best partition
program to use other than PM?

Why not an old, pre-Symantec version of PM? V7 works fine!

 

[Timothy Daniels]

Why not an old, pre-Symantec version of PM? V7 works fine!

Partition Magic (and other pre-Vista partitioning and cloning
and multi-booting utilities) seem to be "iffy" when used with Vista.
It seems to involve the way Vista creates partitions and addresses
those partitions. To understand this (I didn't) set aside a couple
evenings to read this, including all the webpages linked to it:
http://www.multibooters.co.uk/ .

Discussions on the Net which involve this feature of Vista seem
to indicate that if the Vista installer created the partitions, special
procedures are necessary to move or clone them. But if some
other utility created the partition that Vista is in, partition management
and cloning utlilities will work as they have for earlier Windows OSes.

*TimDaniels*

 

[dechert]

Get GPARTED (GNU Partition Editor). Download the .iso (free) and burn
to CD. Boot from that and you can do whatever you need. It works
great and the price can't be beat.

AD

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"AD" (e-mail address removed)> wrote:
Get GPARTED (GNU Partition Editor). Download the .iso (free)

and burn to CD. Boot from that and you can do whatever you need
It works great and the price can't be beat.

I've heard consistently good things about Gparted (and the
GUI for it, Parted Magic). Have you ever used it to move
("slide") a partition that had been created by the Vista installer?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Blattus Slafaly £ ¥ 0/00 :)]

This might be slightly OT, but probably not much.

I relied on Partition Magic for years, but am a little wary of it now
since Norton (Symantec) got their grubby hands on it. Their programs
seem to scatter files all over the hard drive that are next to
impossible to get rid of completely. What's the best partition
program to use other than PM?

Thanks for your help.

Larc



§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§

I like to use gParted live CD. You can partition any file system with
it. And it's free. Download the .iso, burn it and boot it.

 

[John Doe]

This might be slightly OT, but probably not much.

I relied on Partition Magic for years, but am a little wary of it
now since Norton (Symantec) got their grubby hands on it. Their
programs seem to scatter files all over the hard drive that are
next to impossible to get rid of completely. What's the best
partition program to use other than PM?

Probably Acronis Disk Director. I bought version 10 from Newegg for
$35 US total. I am using it on Windows XP SP2, don't know how well
the current version 10 works with Vista. Disk Director is easier to
use than Partition Manager (my last disk manager, and PartitionMagic
before that) or Partition Commander, apparently from the same
company. Disk Director appears much more capable and it is more
intuitive IMO with a better user interface than those.

Since you're familiar with disk management software, of course you
know the potential hazards and you know enough to keep removable
media copies of any important files from your hard drive. Also, make
the optional boot media or a clone of the program disk if it
functions as a boot disk. Don't get rid of your Partition Magic boot
disk. I find having boot disks from more than one publisher/program
can make unexpected problems much easier to solve.

Good luck and have fun.

 

[Blattus Slafaly £ ¥ 0/00 :)]

"AD" (e-mail address removed)> wrote:
Get GPARTED (GNU Partition Editor). Download the .iso (free)

I've heard consistently good things about Gparted (and the
GUI for it, Parted Magic). Have you ever used it to move
("slide") a partition that had been created by the Vista installer?

*TimDaniels*

Parted magic is garbage.

 

[Man-wai Chang ToDie]

I've heard consistently good things about Gparted (and the

GUI for it, Parted Magic). Have you ever used it to move
("slide") a partition that had been created by the Vista installer?

I did. Remember to defrag the partition you wanna shrink.

 

[John Doe]

A really annoying issue is hiding spare "C:" drives. IT
DOESN'T! So if you're switching active partitions you must
remember to HIDE the previous active and also if need be the
third one.

I don't feel comfortable using a "free" product to do such
dangerous work as re-partitioning.

I have been doing spare "C:" drives since Windows 95, using all
disk managers. For that particular purpose of making a backup copy
of the Windows partition, so far, apparently the free Macrium
Reflect does a better job than any paid-for software. It
compresses the image and does not even have to exit Windows, and
it accurately restores an image (from a boot CD). I use the
recommended option to restore the HD boot table, and it has worked
every time so far (including on an SSD drive). The restore takes
longer than with other software, but since restores are done less
frequently than backups, and I just find something else to do like
when doing any other lengthy PC task, that is not a problem here.

 

[John Doe]

By the way... You do not have to specify that the copy will be
hidden, Macrium Reflect makes a file instead of a partition. And
later you can browse that file to copy files out of it.

I just did some disk gymnastics with Macrium Reflect. Have been
using my backup PC. It has a Quantum Fireball hard drive that
sounds like a jet engine. Seriously wanted to replace it with my
quiet SATA Raptor. The Raptor was the secondary drive in my main
system, it stores the Windows partition files made by Macrium
Reflect. Was able to hook it up as the secondary drive in the old
Athlon XP PC (with the Fireball as primary).

.... installed Disk Director to make 32 GB of free space at the
beginning of the Raptor

.... shut down and disconnected the Fireball primary HD, started up
and booted to the Macrium Reflect restore CD

.... browsed to a copy of Windows on the Raptor that was previously
made from my main system SSD primary (Windows) drive

.... told Macrium Reflect to decompress and place a copy of the SSD
drive in the free space at the beginning of the Raptor

.... I told it to use regular XP boot sector stuff instead of the
same as the SSD, because I thought maybe the SSD boot stuff would
be incompatible with the Raptor

Booted into safe mode in order to get the old Athlon XP mainboard
drivers in place. Now, temporarily, I have the whole system the
way it was before, on a relatively slow PC. Speech works.
Automation/scripting works. Yee Haa!
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