By Wade Herman, Tampa PC Users Group
wherman1@tampabay.rr.com

The program was supplied to our Tampa PC Users Group by the generosity of PowerQuest.

I have used PartitionMagic almost since its inception. I have always been very pleased with the results. Each new version has added worthwhile features, and this version is no exception. Now the program can be run directly from Windows and supports 80 GB drives.

On opening the box came the first big surprise, a User Guide of 151 pages, which for the most part is quite definitive. They even included easy to find telephone support numbers and 30 days of complementary telephone support, but, of course, you must pay the toll charges.

My elation was tempered when I received an error message on attempting to install the program, indicating the problem was probably with Norton AntiVirus. Checked to be sure that it was disabled and that I had clicked exit on the GoBack program. I could find no help in the User Guide or at the PowerQuest web site. I screwed my courage to the sticking post and decided to call their technical support. I do not know other’s help desk experiences, but my experiences over the past year have been horrible to the point that I have greatly reduced my software purchases.

I meditated and said a few prayers and dialed. After about 8-10 ringie dingies, you will never guess what happened! A cheery real honest to God human voice answered -difficult to imagine I know. I could hardly contain my irrational exuberance! Gave her the required information and was switched to the tech support “Q”; now the real test. An understandable computer voice informed me there was one person ahead of me in the system. How encouraging. The elevator music was clear and soothing, and they assured me I was very important several times and they had extended wait time due to heavy call volume (one in Q). The wait time was about 13 minutes. When the tech answered, we went through the numbers disabling Norton AntiVirus and Internet Security, and I exited GoBack from the Systray. When that did not work, he recommended that I run PartitionMagic from the Rescue Disks. He assured me that would get around the problem. As he appeared to be anxious to get on to the next person in the “Q”, I let him off the hook and re-booted the computer with the rescue floppies.

It booted OK but no mouse, D@&n, and the tech was gone. Then the light: my mouse is USB. Rebooted and this time at the GoBack splash screen hit the space bar and from here closed down GoBack amid various warnings. Now no problem running Partition Magic, so I should be home free. I wished to create a new partition between the last partition and the unused 40GB. When I attempted this, the dialog box asked which of the existing partitions I wished to take space from? None was not an option. User guide does not appear to cover the situation, so I decided to try online tech support. The response was to tell me to watch the cutsie online video, which is just a video depiction of the printed instructions. I decided to not select any of the options and see what would happen. Low and behold it worked. The new Logical Drive’s drive space was taken from the unallocated 40 GB.

Once you get the program working it certainly lives up to its claims and is quite intuitive. A key feature of PartitionMagic is that if you run out of space on one of the Logical Drives you can expand its size by taking unused space from other drives without losing any data. If you need to reassign drive letters, a program is included that will reassign drive references so programs which need to reference other drives will recognize the new drive letter assignments properly.

If you have a large Hard Drive, I feel that partitioning is almost a must, and PartitionMagic is the best and easiest means of accomplishing this otherwise tedious and intimidating task. u