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| PartitionMagic 8.0 | |
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PowerQuest software makes your life easier if you are in charge of your firm’s computers. PartitionMagic creates new partitions and lets you manage the old and new partitions. BootMagic, which comes with PartitionMagic, lets you boot from multiple operating systems on the same computer. Drive Image lets you migrate your whole hard disk to another (presumably larger) hard disk, or from one hard disk type (Small Computer System Interface or Integrated Device Electronics) to the other, without having to rebuild the computer from scratch. For example, I decided to build a computer to test the new Serial Advanced Technology Attachment hard disk interface and to convert an old computer into a fax server. The computer to be converted into a fax server contained an Ultra160 SCSI Peripheral Component Interconnect card and hard drive to be put into another computer, so I needed to convert this computer to use the IDE hard disk interface. Without PowerQuest products, I would have to back up the data on the computer, program by program, install an operating system on the new IDE fixed disk, install the software and then restore the data. That would take all day. Instead, I added the new IDE fixed disk, started Drive Image 2002, told the program to copy all the partitions on the SCSI fixed disk to the unformatted 60GB IDE drive, and left. When I came back a couple of hours later, the computer had rebooted from the new drive and automatically hid the old partitions on the old drive. I shut down the computer, removed the SCSI card and drive, closed the case back up, and was one step away from being done. I decided to create a separate data partition. Without PartitionMagic, I would either have to install a new hard disk, or repartition the existing drive and reinstall the operating system and all software. With PartitionMagic, I instructed it to create a partition of a certain size and walked away. I could have used a wizard, but I didn’t need to. When I came back, I had a new data partition. The bottom line: The computer spent a tenth of the time to complete the tasks, and I didn’t have to be there. I know people who have bought new computers to avoid repartitioning a fixed disk without Drive Image and PartitionMagic. I am not exaggerating. Another great benefit of PartitionMagic is it allows you to add an operating system nondestructively. You can do this without PartitionMagic, if you installed the original operating system and planned ahead by creating all the partitions you wanted in the appropriate sizes. As long as you add the more modern operating systems last, Windows can keep track of them and give you a choice of which operating system to boot to. But I have had problems with this system. Additionally, once you set up your disk with your two Microsoft operating systems, it’s essentially set in stone. For example, with PartitionMagic and BootMagic, you can run a program in Windows 98 when you need to, and reboot into Windows XP for your other programs. You can even boot into Linux to run Linux programs. When you boot to an operating system in a partition, BootMagic hides the partitions of the other operating systems, which avoids problems the multi-boot system built into Windows operating systems sometimes experiences. The knowledge of hard disks possessed by the technicians at PowerQuest is astonishing. If you have a problem with a hard disk, and you call them for technical support, they will diagnose and fix the problem (if it can be fixed). In addition to a new user interface, PartitionMagic 8.0 has a host of new features: 1) PartitionMagic can manage partitions of up to 160GB containing up to 145GB of data; 2) You can browse the contents of a partition and copy, move or rename files or folders from within PartitionMagic (even from a hidden partition); 3) BootMagic can be installed in any File Allocation Table or FAT32 partition on any drive. You can boot into an alternate partition from Windows, and return to your default Windows operating system on the next reboot; 4) You can resize clusters in an NT file system partition and reclaim space on your disk; 5) PartitionMagic comes with DataKeeper, a basic backup program; 6) The new wizard lets you add additional operating systems to the computer; 7) A wizard to create a backup partition is included; and 8) A PartitionMagic flash tutorial is included. DataKeeper is a nice program to back up hard disks on individual computers. You can’t back up networked drives even if they are mapped, and you can’t select a mapped network drive for a contingent backup location. Your primary backup directory can reside on a mapped network drive. I wished the documentation were a tad more detailed. Although these programs are incredibly useful, they are not toys, and you can accidentally tell some of these programs to do things that will require you to call PowerQuest’s Universe-Class technical support. While most computer techies will understand PowerQuest’s jargon, non-techies will not, but PowerQuest is getting better in this area. |
PowerQuest Corp. Price: $49.95 for upgrade; $69.95 for full version Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP Reviewed by Steven Schmidt, shareholder, director and president of Business & Technology Law, Albuquerque, N.M. PROS CONS VERDICT |
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