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Difference between using Partition magic vs. XP setup

post #1 of 14
7/2/07 at 4:51pm
Thread Starter 
What is the difference between using a partitioning program such as Partition magic vs. just using the xp setup disk to create and delete partitions?
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post #2 of 14
7/2/07 at 4:56pm
try resizing a partition. (make sure you have good backups first).
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post #3 of 14
7/2/07 at 5:07pm
Thread Starter 
Could you elaborate more on the differences? I am very new to the whole formatting and setup of new partitions.
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post #4 of 14
7/2/07 at 5:35pm
XP does very basic operations: create, delete, etc... PM and others do more complex operations such as resize, move, merge, etc.

Be very careful though (as mentioned, a full backup is wise) and if you are using a 160GB or greater disk and your BIOS does not report the full size (like with the Gen 2 / M170) do NOT try to do anything as it will screw up.

Best program of all is gparted which is free and can be found at http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ - so much better than PM and others. Best of all it does not suffer from the large disk problem previously mentioned.
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post #5 of 14
7/2/07 at 5:51pm
Thread Starter 
How exactly does that gparted work? I read on the web that you need that gnu parted software. What exactly does that do and what is the process of getting gparted to work correctly?
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post #6 of 14
7/2/07 at 6:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by xlc210 View Post
Could you elaborate more on the differences? I am very new to the whole formatting and setup of new partitions.
The big difference is that programs like PartitionMagic (or Acronis DiskManager, etc.) allow you to resize, merge, split, etc. live partitions, that have data on them. If you change any partitions with fdisk (the partitioning program that comes with XP), all data on any such partition will be lost, hence the reference to backups in Chris' post...
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post #7 of 14
7/2/07 at 6:12pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by xlc210 View Post
How exactly does that gparted work? I read on the web that you need that gnu parted software. What exactly does that do and what is the process of getting gparted to work correctly?
Well, if you know how to use the web, why don't you look it up? I don't know anything about gparted, but this link is the first I got in a Google search... P.S.: Hmmph, I just saw that K9387 had already given you that link. How about just going there for the information you want?
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post #8 of 14
7/2/07 at 6:15pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by K9387 View Post
Be very careful though (as mentioned, a full backup is wise) and if you are using a 160GB or greater disk and your BIOS does not report the full size (like with the Gen 2 / M170) do NOT try to do anything as it will screw up.
Hmm, I do have a 160GB disk in my M170. No idea what the BIOS reports (=too lazy to boot it up and check right now ), but I did resize partitions on it with PartitionMagic, with no problems whatsoever. YMMV... P.S.: I should say that I used PM 8.0, a version from the time when this was still produced and sold by PowerQuest. They have been bought by Symantec a few years back, and if Symantec touched that code, then I would not be surprised if they screwed up what was a fine program before. I never allow anything from Symantec within a mile from any of my machines...
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post #9 of 14
7/2/07 at 7:08pm
It will report 137GB. For operations within windows PM is fine, but as soon as it needs to reboot and use Dr DOS or Caldera DOS (can't remember which) it will only see 137GB and therefore if the partition in question strays across this barrier maintaining partition and files integrity when it can't see half the data is not very hit and a lot of miss...

Although you are welcome to try this yourself I found out the hard way, twice, then a third time on a minimal install just to check.
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post #10 of 14
7/2/07 at 9:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pirx View Post
The big difference is that programs like PartitionMagic (or Acronis DiskManager, etc.) allow you to resize, merge, split, etc. live partitions, that have data on them. If you change any partitions with fdisk (the partitioning program that comes with XP), all data on any such partition will be lost, hence the reference to backups in Chris' post...

Yes. Sorry, I was in a rush, and should probably have not posted at all rather than being brief and mysterious. XP storage manager does not let you resize a partition live while retaining all the data. You should still back up; but more as a safety net; with xp storage manager you can delete partitions and make new ones, so backup is essential since you will be deleting all your data before making different partitions.

Oh and I mean a real backup, ie a full disk copy to a different disk. Not the xp 'backup' which creates some binary blob backup file which won't restore to a differently sized partition
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post #11 of 14
7/2/07 at 10:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by K9387 View Post
It will report 137GB.
Yes, I just checked, and that's what it says.
Quote:
For operations within windows PM is fine, but as soon as it needs to reboot and use Dr DOS or Caldera DOS (can't remember which) it will only see 137GB and therefore if the partition in question strays across this barrier maintaining partition and files integrity when it can't see half the data is not very hit and a lot of miss...
It doesn't use any kind of DOS when it reboots. At least not the version I was using. That one does boot the NT kernel, and does its thing from there. What version did you use?
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Although you are welcome to try this yourself I found out the hard way, twice, then a third time on a minimal install just to check.
Like I said, I have resized my partitions on this M170 a couple of times, and never had a problem. Most of those resizes involved partitions beyond the 137GB boundary. But of course, I always made sure I had a current disk image of the previous configuration, just in case. Re-installing and reconfiguring all the software on that machine would have literally cost me weeks of work. You don't take chances with a configuration like that...
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post #12 of 14
7/2/07 at 10:36pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisLilley View Post
Oh and I mean a real backup, ie a full disk copy to a different disk. Not the xp 'backup' which creates some binary blob backup file which won't restore to a differently sized partition
That last one I don't understand: The NTbackup that comes with Windows XP is a file-based backup, and not a disk image, so the restore doesn't care at all what partition it is being restored to, as long as the data fit. But, I still agree that for a full system backup a disk image is the way to go. Now that DiskImage is not an option anymore (for me, anyway, see my previous post...), I am actually quite happy with Acronis TrueImage. Plus, as I posted recently, the option to restore an Acronis TI disk image to different hardware is simply f*cking awesome; there is simply nothing in the market like it.
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post #13 of 14
7/2/07 at 11:35pm
I have to second that vote for gparted...excellent tool and its pretty easy to just burn the boot iso.
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post #14 of 14
7/3/07 at 8:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pirx View Post
That last one I don't understand: The NTbackup that comes with Windows XP is a file-based backup, and not a disk image, so the restore doesn't care at all what partition it is being restored to, as long as the data fit.

I had used it a couple of times (under NT) and when I came to restore, it said that it couldn't because the partition was a different size. I stopped using it after that, naturally.
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