"Splitting" a 120GB NTFS HDD with Norton's Partition Magic 8.0

[BillW50]

Hi,

My Wife's Dell WinXP SP2 Home Edition laptop has a 120GB NTFS HDD with
one partition.

Now that I have an external Seagate 500GB drive (connects via USB),
I have moved a lot of personal files (photos, videos, MP3 music, etc.) to
it. Now there is around 80GB free. I plan to defrag the HDD next.

My next plan is to partition it into two 60GB logical drives C:& D:
using Norton's Partition Magic 8.0. I have a very good reason for doing
this. I will explain later.

Is there anything wrong with this "splitting" idea?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address

Norton's Partition Magic is really old. I wouldn't let it touch anything
newer than say from '99. As it has a nasty habit screwing up newer
stuff. Paragon has free stuff for personal use. Why not use one of those?

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/

 

[jaugustine]

Hi,

My Wife's Dell WinXP SP2 Home Edition laptop has a 120GB NTFS HDD with
one partition.

Now that I have an external Seagate 500GB drive (connects via USB),
I have moved a lot of personal files (photos, videos, MP3 music, etc.) to
it. Now there is around 80GB free. I plan to defrag the HDD next.

My next plan is to partition it into two 60GB logical drives C: & D:
using Norton's Partition Magic 8.0. I have a very good reason for doing
this. I will explain later.

Is there anything wrong with this "splitting" idea?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address

 

[Paul]

Norton's Partition Magic is really old. I wouldn't let it touch anything
newer than say from '99. As it has a nasty habit screwing up newer
stuff. Paragon has free stuff for personal use. Why not use one of those?

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/

I wouldn't care what he uses, as long as he does a backup first

I hate sad stories...

If the drive is 120GB, for safety, you could do a sector by sector
backup first, before pushing the button on a partition editor.

Paul

 

[BillW50]

I wouldn't care what he uses, as long as he does a backup first

So true! Although backing up is nothing compared to if it can really
restore. Most people never test their backups to see if they really
work. Sadly sometimes they don't.

I hate sad stories...

Me too.

If the drive is 120GB, for safety, you could do a sector by sector
backup first, before pushing the button on a partition editor.

Sector by sector is indeed more reliable and eats far more time.
Although not necessary for many systems.

 

[Tester]

No there isn't anything wrong. For your system Partition Magic 8 should
be fine because it works. Am I correct to assume that the HD is (E)IDE
- old DELL systems used to come with this type? If so then go ahead.
With SATA drives perhaps it wouldn't be a good idea to use Partition
Magic because some systems were destroyed completely.

I would, however, do a complete backup of the system using Norton Ghost
or Acronis to be a safe side. The trial versions of these programs
should be fine if you don't have the licensed version.

hth

 

[Paul]

So true! Although backing up is nothing compared to if it can really
restore. Most people never test their backups to see if they really
work. Sadly sometimes they don't.


Me too.


Sector by sector is indeed more reliable and eats far more time.
Although not necessary for many systems.

The last sector by sector I ran, ran at 100MB/sec. (That means,
one disk was reading at 100MB/sec, the other writing at 100MB/sec,
both SATA.) So 120GB would take about 20 minutes. Not all my disks
are that fast (I have lots of older junk, including a vintage 4GB
drive that is slow as molasses).

Paul

 

[pjp]

Hi,

My Wife's Dell WinXP SP2 Home Edition laptop has a 120GB NTFS HDD with
one partition.

Now that I have an external Seagate 500GB drive (connects via USB),
I have moved a lot of personal files (photos, videos, MP3 music, etc.)
to
it. Now there is around 80GB free. I plan to defrag the HDD next.

My next plan is to partition it into two 60GB logical drives C: & D:
using Norton's Partition Magic 8.0. I have a very good reason for doing
this. I will explain later.

Is there anything wrong with this "splitting" idea?

Thank You in Advance, John

PS, Remove "ine" from my email address

Sounds like you're more or less cleaning it up of all the "garbage" etc. If
there's not too much software you want to keep installed, perhaps just do a
complete reinstall is in order. During that, you could delete current
partition, create a new one using just what you want and then after windows
is up and going create the 2nd drive using the unused hd space. End up with
a "virgin" pc, especially if you have the original Restore cd's or the
Receovery partition is intact.

 

[BillW50]

In

The last sector by sector I ran, ran at 100MB/sec. (That means,
one disk was reading at 100MB/sec, the other writing at 100MB/sec,
both SATA.) So 120GB would take about 20 minutes. Not all my disks
are that fast (I have lots of older junk, including a vintage 4GB
drive that is slow as molasses).

Well I gave up on desktop computers many years ago. And I only run
laptops and netbooks. And while these Gateway M465 can support two
drives, one must be a SATA and the other has to be a PATA. So that
doesn't help. Although my Alienware M9700 does support two SATA drives.
So I can clone two SATA drives there.

But that is a lot of work removing the hard drives from the caddies (not
really, but extra steps). So I ended up buying different USB to SATA
cables until I found one that fits without removing the caddies from the
drives. So swapping hard drives are as easy as changing a battery in a
laptop.

And it takes me about an hour for every 100GB copied. Acronis True Image
2009 can't clone a drive live, but Paragon Drive Copy can. But
unfortunately Paragon thinks Windows 7 is still on these drives and
removes the Windows XP boot system and replaces it with Windows 7 boot.
Still trying to figure out that one.

 

[Trifle Menot]

Well I gave up on desktop computers many years ago.

Laptop keyboards are a poor tool for programming productivity, where a
good keyboard is more important than a mouse. But the average Joe porn
surfer doesn't care about that.

 

[BillW50]

In

Laptop keyboards are a poor tool for programming productivity, where a
good keyboard is more important than a mouse. But the average Joe
porn surfer doesn't care about that.

Ah... who told you that you have to use a laptop keyboard to use a
laptop? I rarely ever use a laptop keyboard at all. Heck, I rarely ever
use a laptop screen either. As I use an external one most of the time.

This laptop for example lives in a dock 99.999% of the time. And the
rare times I want portability, all I do is to release it from the dock
and it is free. No cables to undo or anything. And it is far easier to
swap hard drives in a laptop than it is in a desktop. And I swap them
all of the time too. It is just as easy as swapping the main battery.

The main reason is to test backups. You don't know how many times I have
discovered that backups fails to restore. So it is a task that I believe
you must do. The other times I swap hard drives is that I had lots of
problems with dualboot setups. So I only allow one OS per drive and you
don't have to worry about these issues anymore.

 

[BillW50]

In

You should always have one OS per partition. I've ran up to three no
problems.

Per partition? Who said anything about per partition? I did the dual,
multi boot stuff and it just ain't worth it to me. As it will sometimes
cause you much problems in the future.

Take this computer for example. It used to have both XP and Windows 7. I
removed Windows 7 and I had to fix the boot so XP will load (FIXMBR and
FIXBOOT). You would think the problem would be long gone. But no,
Paragon Drive Copy v11 knows that Windows 7 was on this system (how I do
not know). So it thinks it is doing me a favor by configuring it to boot
Windows 7 which doesn't exist anymore.

If you like multiple OS on your system, then I say go for it. As for me,
I have had enough horror stories from them over the many years that I
have lost complete interest and faith in them. So don't come crying to
me someday when it was multiple OS that somehow screwed everything up
for you. ;-)

 

[Jason]

You should always have one OS per partition. I've ran up to three no
problems.

 

[Jason]

it never did. The important thing Windows 98 (MS-DOS 7) had to be on C and
the others (NT versions) were on the other drives/partitions and it worked
great. I haven't dual booted with windows 7 yet as that was on a laptop so
need to have it on this computer which is dual boot also.

 

[BillW50]

In Jason wrote on Sun, 27 Mar 2011 20:43:43 +1200:

it never did. The important thing Windows 98 (MS-DOS 7) had to be on
C and the others (NT versions) were on the other drives/partitions
and it worked great. I haven't dual booted with windows 7 yet as that
was on a laptop so need to have it on this computer which is dual
boot also.

I heard tons of people over the years say MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, 9x, and
ME needs to be on drive C. And that was never true. But what is true is
you need the boot files on Drive C and the rest could be on any other
drive. And the only files you need on C are:

MSDOS.SYS
IO.SYS
COMMAND.COM

And you can have four drive Cs on a single hard drive. And you can pick
which one you want to boot by making one of them active. Heck I just
booted up my Windows 98 Start Up from a flash drive to just make sure.
And my hard drive is no longer drive C, but the USB flash drive becomes
drive C instead.