Be careful with Partition Magic Pro 7

Hello All,

For the past couple of months, I have been enjoying PowerQuest's Partition Magic PRo 7 without a problem. This after, I took it upon myself to launch PMPro7 to create an NTFS partition starting just after two existing FAT32 partitions.

Prior to this activity, I had two Primary partitions, both formatted FAT32, and both with WIn98FE installed. These two partitions were essentially mirrored versions. While one of the two original partitions is Active the other is always Hidden. This way Win98FE does not complain or get confused.

This afternoon's request was to create a third Primary partition just beyond the two exist partitions and format this new partition NTFS. When prompted, I declined the location on the physical disk where PMPro7 thought best it should be, but did not require as such, and also chose NOT to make this new partition Active.

Finally, I was prompted if I was going to be installing an operating system and I checked Yes. I then went about committing the request and it stated it would be rebooting to Dos mode. I did not give it much thought (I was playing CS on another PC) until a couple of moments later.

I looked up to see that PMPro7 had resized the original two FAT32 partitions, and went about moving second FAT32 partition. My only guess is that PMPro7 did NOT adhere to my request to place this new partition after the two existing partitions.

Now, instead of two 5GB Primary partitions I have one 3280MB and the other 3953MB. Great, although this PC is for experimentation I will now have to wipe the entire disk clean and start over. Thanks PowerQuest, its REALLY nice when we give you money for you to present options and then completely ignore our decisions on those requests.

If I wanted a nag, PITA, or headache, I would have gone upstairs and allowed the wife to let into me.

yea its not 100% ive had problems and so have most of my buddies. it messed 20 gigs on me once by freezing while realocating the space. its done some good easily acomplished work for me on the other hand so i choose to still approve of it

Yeah, I had an older version once. Just created 2 partitions : FAT32, then after everything was installed, I decided I wanted to install Linux on it. I then install PM, then after I make all the changes, it asks to reboot, so I do, it creates the new partition, ... After Linux is installed, I then tried to go into Windows (98SE btw), it said "please insert system disk" ... I was like WTF, then some time afterwards, I discovered PM had destroyed my Windows partition, freshly formatted and everything

The amusing part is that NTFS partitions made with PMpro7 are treated/seen as OS/2 partitions by XP. This is with/without even formatting them, too.

I wiped the drive clean, installed XPpro to a 5GB partition, and then installed PMpro7 in XP. BTW, I now use PMpro7 as a boot manager! After booting XPpro and launching PMpro7, I created a FAT32 5GB partition immediately following the 5GB NTFS partition and set it active.

Rebooted and installed WIn98FE and also installed PMpro7. This allows me to boot back and forth between XPpro and Win98FE and neither are aware of the other's existence, although XPpro does see this 'other' partition it just cannot recognize it.

When one of the boot partitions is booted the other partition is 'hidden'. All boot partitions are Primary, too. Anyway, happy hunting!

Oh, I almost forgot. My activities--which are not that different from other geeks--happen to take me into situations where I have installed a given OS multiple times on the same computer. I wonder how this effects the software licencing.

You have to be really careful with any partitioning software, as mistakes are that easy to make......

Once I have a drive partitioned (usually 5GB chunks), I leave it well alone, with the occasional reformat and install of an OS.

I use either FDISK, or Segate's Disk Manager software (As I have a Seagate drive)

I just don't think it's worth the grief, hoping your data and partitions will survive all that moving about....

Well, I for one do not experiment on my working PC. I experiment using a PC designated as experiment PC.

I've never throw caution to the wind.