NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
Partition Magic 3.0 From PowerQuest Corporation
Part 1 of 2 - A Review by David Hinds - September 97
davidlhinds@juno.com
(click to email author)


I originally encountered Partition magic at the fall Comdex in Las Vegas in November of 1995, where I was given a copy of version 1.0 with an offer to upgrade to version 2.0 at a reduced price if I did it before the end of the year. I did experiment with version 1 and was sure the improvements promised in version 2 would make it a more powerful tool; however, due to a number of things, among them procrastination and loosing the upgrade coupon, I did not buy version 2.

When the user group received version 3.0 on the promise that it be reviewed in our newsletter, I agreed to review it, but because of computer problems, I have been delayed in testing it until last week when my new notebook arrived at my office. I decided the 2G hard drive would be an excellent testing ground and with the Pentium 200MMX CPU and 80 meg of RAM it should be a breeze.

Installing Partition Magic version 3.0 was a simple matter of inserting the CD-ROM in the drive, running Setup, and following instructions, not even a hint of Murphy's Law.

Opening Partition Magic in Windows 95 was a simple click on the icon and when it informed me that all windows would be closed and it would run in DOS, I said OK and it did! Creating three equal (almost) partition on the C drive was a simple matter of selecting create and telling it how much of the free space I wanted it to use for the partition and selecting the proper colored box for the type of partition. I made the second partition (Windows 95 was already on the drive along with Corel Office Suite 8 and occupied the first partition) an NTFS partition with the intention of installing NT 4.0 on it and the third a FAT Partition on which I would install Memphis (Windows 98 Beta 2). After I had them created, I decided it would be more logical to have the two FAT partitions first, then the NTFS partition. After resizing both partitions (again a simple matter of following the on screen instructions of choosing resize and telling it how much to reduce them by either entering the new size, dragging the side of the partition bar on the bar scale, or using the arrow at the end at the bar) I could not find a way to move one partition across another. (Maybe in one of the next releases, Gene?). No problem, I had not installed the new operating systems yet so I chose the Delete option, deleted the NTFS partition, and recreated it after the two FAT partitions.

Using Partition Magic version 3.0 seemed almost too simple so far, so I got a little braver and reduced the size of the Windows 95 partition, putting the free space in front of the partition. Moving a partition that contains that much occupied space took a few minutes, but after the move, Windows, WordPerfect, and Freecell still ran perfectly!

Partition Magic continues to impress me as being a very handy tool, so much so that I plan to include it in my office budget for the coming year.

Included on the CD-Rom you also get PQBoot, Uninstaller Mover, Cluster Analyzer, DriveMapper, and IBM's Boot Manager. Due to time and space limitations, they will be reviewed in next month's newsletter.

PowerQuest Corporation 1-800-379-2566 www.powerquest.com P.O. Box 1911, Orem, UT 84059-9948

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