You've just bought a new computer with a 12 gigabyte hard drive.

Some people say that it works fine with only one partition. But let's take another look. The other day I thought I was on the A: drive, and I typed "del *.*". After I hit enter I realized that I had a problem. I had to format the C: drive and put back all the programs I had just lost. (When you are in DOS the deleted programs do not go to the recycle bin.)

Previous to this time, I had copied the files from C:\ to a new partition D:\. I copy over the files every few days. So when I put the operating system and all the programs back, I only needed to transfer all the files I wanted to keep from drive D:\. There are many reasons that some day you will also lose your drive C: drive, and you will find it convenient to just copy over your files from a 2 gigabyte partition that I think you should make on that new drive.

After the first of the year, we expect that new computers will not come with a CD that contains the operating system and all the programs. So it may be worth considering a method of backing up the software on a new computer with a second hard drive of smaller size. Other reasons to partition your new drive are, for example, you may want to have more than one operating system, or you may want to store all your data in one place on a separate drive to make it easy to copy to a backup system.

I used version one of Partition Magic, and I have used each new version; we are now on version 5. The first thing you need to do with any program is to read the manual. I read mine three times before I run the program. Do you understand the BIOS 1024 cylinder limit? Or the 2GB boot code boundary? It helps after you become familiar with Partition Magic to read about these things so that you know where they came from. Don't be afraid of these terms. They are described very simply and you can, if you want to, become very understanding of the various limitations of operating systems and bios configurations. The description of what a hard drive is all about is worth the cost of Partition Magic Version 5. The copy disk program is also very valuable. You may "diskcopy" a partition from one place to another or to another drive. (Neat for new computers, or when you are going to take out the old hard drive and put in a larger one; you copy the old one onto the new one and proceed from there.)

Now let’s look at the process of partitioning a hard drive.

The first thing you are told to do in the manual is get out of any programs that are running. Disable your virus program, for example. After you are sure no other programs are running, you can partition your drive easily using the wizards that are provided, or do it manually just because you want to. Creating a new partition may cause your drive letters to change and so you use DriveMapper (included) to rearrange all the programs so that they go to the proper drive and you will find no difference in how your programs work.

Now let’s see what is in the new version.

You may merge partitions, change a logical drive to a primary drive, and convert from NTFS file system to FAT32. You may merge FAT and FAT32 partitions.

Reading the manual will show you some of the shortcomings of Windows NT now that larger drives are common. Windows 2000 (Windows NT version 5) will use a non-standard "Dynamic" hard drive, which this Partition Magic v 5 will not work with. You may create 64k FAT clusters to work with Windows NT so it will work with the larger drives.

Partition Magic v 5 supports drives over 20 gigabytes in size. Also it supports FAT16, FAT32, FAT32X, NTFS, HPFS, and Linux ext2 partitions.

You may set up the changes you want to make, add partitions, etc. and then you have a choice of applying the change or changes, or discarding the change. The program switches to DOS to actually make the changes.

I don't want this to become another manual, so I will stop here. Let me say that I do not believe that anyone who owns a computer should be without Partition Magic Version 5. There is a wealth of information in the manual and in the online help so that you can answer almost all of your questions about hard drives simply and on your own. Also, the program works so simply that it is easily used by a beginner.