PartitionMagic8 & Win2000,,, creating new logical drive

[Gekko]

Hi all,,,
I have PartMagic8 and a spare machine with Win2000 on it; it has a
4gig H/D.
Thing is, I've never used P/M before and I dont want to experiment on
my primary machine....... the one I'm using to post this.

The 2000 machine has:
A-drive -- Floppy
C-drive -- Primary
D-drive -- Zip (omega)
E-drive -- CD Rom
F-drive -- Flash Stick USB (of which only shows with the Stick in.)

I want to create a new logical partition on the C:drive, making it about
1.2gig, and at this stage I have gotten to the third window of the 'create
new partition' within the Part-Magic Wizard.
I have nominated the size, given it a volume name, & made it Fat32. (the
existing Win2000 is Fat32). PartMagic has the drive letter as being 'G' of
which I dont mind as any file associations relating to the prior drives
should
be left intact...... (i hope). (although, it does seem funny to have the
logical
partition so far away from its parent.)

Questions::
Am I correct in leaving the new Drive Letter (G) as per P/M's choice?

Is it okay to make an Extended/Logical Partition of my Primary Partition?
(I did read somewhere in the Help Files of P/M that it is not a good idea
to do this, but I could be mistaken in my interpretation too.)

Is there anything else I should know or do,,,,, have I missed anything?
(I do not have an installation disk for Win2000 at all, and if there is any
chance that I will stuff up, then I will Abort. I like having Win2000 on the
spare computer as a learning curve and hence dont want to lose it.)

All assist appreciated.
Gekko

 

[DL]

You have a 4gb disk - very small I wouldnt recommend partitioning, specially
as you dont have a win2k disk.
Win2k needs at least 15% free space to function correctly

 

[Gekko]

You have a 4gb disk - very small I wouldnt recommend partitioning, specially
as you dont have a win2k disk.
Win2k needs at least 15% free space to function correctly

Yeah, you are right, I was stretching a bit.... guess I'm just keen to
have a go with P/M.
I have plenty of space on this computer, but dont want to mess with it.
I have another one with win98 on it, but it only has a 2 gig drive; I'll
try
to snaffle a second hand larger drive from somewhere and give it a go then.
Gekko

 

[Sid Knee]

Yeah, you are right, I was stretching a bit.... guess I'm just keen to
have a go with P/M.
I have plenty of space on this computer, but dont want to mess with it.
I have another one with win98 on it, but it only has a 2 gig drive; I'll
try
to snaffle a second hand larger drive from somewhere and give it a go then.
Gekko

Don't know if anyone else has found this, but I find that PM-8
continually disagrees with Windows exactly where a partition should end.

In fact if I boot from a PM dos boot, it won't even look at my
partitions (let alone do anything else) unless I let it change the
ending sector (which I'm loath to do since Windows is running just fine
thanks). This happens on any of my Win2K systems so it's not simply a
bug in one installation.

Thing is that PM-8 is rather long-in-the-tooth these days and I'm pretty
sure pre-dates the latest versions of the NTFS file system. I don't know
of any version-updates that might fix this problem (I could be wrong).

If anyone can shed any light on this, I'd be pleased to hear. Meantime,
I've pretty much given up on PM-8 in favour of BING etc.

 

[DL]

Never had a problem with PM8 and win2k
I would never use PM to set up the partitions prior to installing win. I use
the win cd to partition as required.
Then at some later stage PM to modify as required

 

[Gekko]

Never had a problem with PM8 and win2k

I would never use PM to set up the partitions prior to installing win. I use
the win cd to partition as required.
Then at some later stage PM to modify as required

Ditto....!
One thing though, if you dont mind me asking, is it correct that third
party utilities dont create Dos partitions?
In other words, if I were to have been successful in creating the logical
drive that I wanted, Dos itself wouldnt recognise it.
If this is the case, what utility could I use so I could have some sort of
Dos on that logical drive.
All of this is for future reference.
Thanks.
Gekko

 

[Stubby]

You're lucky. I've had various crashes. Note there are updates to PM
8.0 that you need to get. But now it's all administered by Symmantec.
PowerQuest and Norton have be swallowed up. I have a Norton PM 8.0 AND
a PQ PM 8.0 and they behave differently. One claims the beginning and
ending cylinders don't agree with the partition size, it offers to fix
the condition and all continues.

 

[ByTor]

I would never use PM to set up the partitions prior to installing win. I use
the win cd to partition as required.
Then at some later stage PM to modify as required

Mind if I ask why you don't use it to setup partitions prior to
installation?

 

[DL]

Because I've seen to many problems, using third party tools to partition,
PRIOR to installing win.
Why I dont know.
Using the win cd to partition, then installing win,and then using third
party tools seems to be less problomatic, in my experience.

 

[DL]

Couldnt tell you, I havent used dos, other than in command consol, since
win3* or was it win98?

 

[ByTor]

says...



Mind if I ask why you don't use it to setup partitions prior to
installation?

Because I've seen to many problems, using third party tools to partition,
PRIOR to installing win.
Why I dont know.
Using the win cd to partition, then installing win,and then using third
party tools seems to be less problomatic, in my experience.

Oh okay thanks.......Thought there was some kind of bug or something I
didn't know about.........Been using PM for years setting up windows and
never had an issue........

Thanks..........

 

[John]

Ditto....!
One thing though, if you dont mind me asking, is it correct that third
party utilities dont create Dos partitions?
In other words, if I were to have been successful in creating the logical
drive that I wanted, Dos itself wouldnt recognise it.
If this is the case, what utility could I use so I could have some sort of
Dos on that logical drive.
All of this is for future reference.
Thanks.
Gekko

They will and PM8 is capable of doing so. You may have a problem if you
introduce a new primary partition in front of any MS OS however. Many
claim success in doing so but I have not and lost an XP install trying.
It was totally confused as to witch partition it was on and I had to
re-install. If you examine your registry and search for hard coded drive
letters you will most likely find that MS is by far the worst offender
in not using the system variable.

MS DOS (if you are talking 6.22 or older) wants to be installed to and
boot from a primary partition, preferably C:. It won't boot from a
logical partition in an extended (yet primary) container in my
experience at least not without hacking the code. Modern drives also
present a problem with their sheer size, 16 bits just can't count that high.

John