14 DAY TRIAL // Hard drive partitions...who needs such a thing? Well, before anything else, I must say what a partition is, when talking about computer engineering, since I don't care about the math-related terms or other uses of this word.
Think about a partition as a slice of a pie. Why would one slice a pie? Usually, one of the reasons would be "to eat it easier". Hard disk drive partitioning is used to create logical divisions on that drive, allowing logical formatting that depends on the operating system and the file system(s) you want to use.
There are a lot of reasons to partition your hard drive, and even if you don't want to have three Windows versions and five Linux distros installed on your computer, there are two solid reasons about it.
Better organization on your hard drive leads to improved speed and reliability, and there are two problems that can be solved here, as I was saying earlier, and both are related to file fragmentation.
The first problem to take down is swap file fragmentation, and the solution is to create a swap partition close to the beginning of your hard drive (first partition will have the OS installed on it and the second must be the swap one, since access time increases as you're heading towards the physical end of your drive) and place on it a fixed-size swap file as large as possible (usual recommendations are to make it two and half times the size of your system's memory).
The second problem that comes as a natural consequence to the first one is the need to keep your boot (system) partition as clean as possible, so a good idea is to create a new slice for installing programs, and the game goes on from here, but I am sure you got the idea.
These being said, there's only one problem left - we know what to do, but don't know what tools to use and how. Don't worry, because this is my task now, showing you the way. As usual, there are two alternatives, the free and the commercial ones. When talking about partitioning programs, most of the commercial ones beat their free relatives, especially when talking about their ease of use, so here it goes...
PartitionMagic is a tool that I've been using for ages, and it never failed. What I have here is the demo version, which allows viewing most of the program's features, but won't let you perform any changes to your drive, as far as I was able to figure out.
The three tools from the Professional Edition are also missing, but I must name them in order to give you a full insight of what you'll get for your money. The DriveMapper and BootMagic were designed to let you change partition letters and boot order easily, while the last program of the tools trio allows the creation of rescue disks (a good addition, since it's always better to be safe then sorry).
The installation kit of the demo has 22.6MB in size and it comes as a ZIP file that you have to unpack and then find the setup.exe file, launch it and finish the process. Once you jump these small obstacles, the game is on. Let's start!
Although designed more than three years ago, the program's interface looks fresh and well done even for today's standards. There's nothing hidden here, every function can be accessed in two ways or more.
I'll leave the program's menus aside and move on to the wizards. They are started when you choose a task from the left panel or the corresponding menu items. When you want to perform partition operations, first thing to do is select the one you want to operate on from the Disk Map display.
First thing that you can do with PartitionMagic is creating new partitions. Let's suppose that you have an 80GB drive and one 30GB partition, with the rest of it being unallocated space. All you have to do is select the grey space in the Disk Map, choose "Create a new partition" from the "Pick a Task" panel and then follow the wizard's advice!
Similar tasks are done the same way, since there are wizards to help you install new operating systems, resize or merge existing partitions and more. Or course that if you don't want to waste time with the wizzies, you don't have to!
The manual approach to partition operations is recommended to advanced users, because you won't have any wizard to back you up. Fastest way to work with PartitionMagic in manual mode is to use the context menu available when you right click the partitions or unallocated space in the Drive Map. You won't get much guidance this way, but if you know what you're doing, you gain a lot of time.
Once you are happy with all your changes, you must click the Apply button located at the bottom of the left panel, and usually reboot your computer. All operations are done without data loss, but it's always a good idea to create a set of backup disks first.
This program is simply the best of its kind, and will remain in that position for a while, even though Symantec stated that it has no plans on releasing a new version. If you have to choose between buying a large hard drive, then use various obscure partitioning tools and a smaller drive and PartitionMagic, I suggest you go for the last choice. Time will tell which one is better.
The Good
A complete features set, an excellent, user friendly interface and outstanding reliability proved time and time again by millions of successful uses, combined with a good Help system should be enough as strong points, I guess...
The Bad
Some people may consider the price of this program to be high, and they may be right, but quality and power usually don't come for free.
Windows 2003 Server won't allow you to install this program at all and this is the first bad thing about it. Even worse, for now there aren't any intentions to release new versions, and with the launch of Windows Vista and its new file system, this awesome application may become outdated.
I was about to forget a very important thing...the demo version won't let you write the changes to disk, but it's a good way to get to know this program before buying it.
The Truth
PartitionMagic is a "must have" for any serious computer user out there. All I can wish is to find out that Symantec will provide updates when Vista comes out and the ability to support any other new file systems that may pop out in time. If these will be solved, I'll use PartitionMagic for a lifetime, and I'm not the only one thinking this, I am sure about it!
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
