Ranish Partition Manager

[Stan Weiss]

ranish.com » Partition Manager

Ranish Partition Manager is a powerful hard disk partitioning tool.
It gives users high level of control for running multiple operating
systems, such as Linux, Windows 98/XP, FreeDOS, and FreeBSD on a single > disk.

Partition Manager can create, copy, and resize primary and extended
partitions. It includes command line interface and simulation mode that
works with large files so you can safely experiment before working on
the real hard drive partition tables.
Partition Manager 2.37 (166k) September 15, 1998. {Runs on 8086}
Partition Manager 2.40 (60k) February 8, 2001. (Mikhail Ranish) Stable
Partition Manager 2.43 (172k) April 10, 2002. Beta by Muthu.
Partition Manager 2.44 (138k) June 09, 2002. Beta-Beta-Beta

Has anyone one used this on a Windows 2000 drive? If so which version.
If not has anyone anyother freeware Partition Manager on Windows 2000?
If so what program.

Stan

 

[Donnie Russell]

I have used version 2.40 to partition a 20 GB hard drive before
installing Windows 2000, and it works perfectly. But when I upgraded to
a 160 GB hard drive, and used 2.40 to partition it, Win2K failed to
boot. I then had to delete all those partitions and use the
partitioning built into the setup process of Win2K.

Later versions of Ranish Partition Manager have probably dealt with
this, but I haven't tried them. But for smaller drives (I'm not sure
how small), the stable version, 2.40 should be OK.

For larger drives, I would just use Win2K's setup disc, or if you have
a Knoppix disc, you can use QtParted (a front end for Parted), which I
think is built into all versions of Knoppix.
http://www.knoppix.org/
http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/

 

[Stan Weiss]

I have a 60 GB drive with 1 partition and Win2K installed and running. I
have many small files and each take up 32k. I was looking to make a
small partition where each would be 4k.
Stan

 

[Donnie Russell]

For FAT32:

Parted can resize your partition, and change your cluster size (but
maybe only while resizing the partition, I'm not sure). Before doing
anything, I would back up those files to a CD-R if you can, run a
chkdsk, defrag, then boot Knoppix and use QtParted to:

* Shrink the FAT32 partition to the size you want
* Change the FAT32 cluster size to 4K
* Create a new partition in the empty space, if you want

Off-topic:

If you're using NTFS, then I think it would be safer to go with a
commercial product like Acronis PartitionExpert. If this is a one-time
operation, maybe a demo version would get the job done, and it would
work for FAT16/32 too.

 

[A. Mercer]

If not has anyone anyother freeware Partition Manager on Windows 2000?
If so what program.

Qtparted on the bootable System Rescue CD is a graphical partition
manager, sort of Partition Magic clone, handles a number of formats,
including NTFS. Worked greate for me to resize and create NTFS partitions.

Art