partition magic experts needed. will this work or did I just waste 69.95

[bigslammer]

currently I have a 13.5 gb hd with win98SE on one partition, which is fat32. I bought PMagic 5 because they claim it can merge partitions and you can go from fat32 to fat. well right now I have 6gb of data on my hd and tried to create another 6gb partition(fat32). did everything instructions told me to do and I'm still on one large partition. Basically I want to create a 6gb partition and move all applications and data to this new partition(D. after the transfer of data my c: drive will be under 2039 mb and I will be able to switch this fat32 partition back to fat. once back to fat I can install NT on my c: and dual boot. My main problem is that this program seems to have been a complete waste of money. I've tried resizing my partition and when I restart I'm still at the same size partition. Then I've tried creating new partitions and I'm still at one partition. what gives. have any of you had any problems with this. thx http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

[Glytzhkof]

1: Did you format the new partition you created? If you didn't that's why your computer doesn't recognize it.

2: Moving all your applications to D:\ to allow dual boot will not help you much in my opinion. NT won't be able to read the FAT32 partition and thus this arrangement is not optimal. It would be better to create multiple 2GB FAT16 partitions because then you will have access to all of them from both Win98 & NT. Keep in mind that a 2GB FAT partition requires a very large cluster size (I think about 32K), so these drives should only contain few and large files.

[This message has been edited by Glytzhkof (edited 12-22-1999).]

[Banti]

I beleive that you will need another drive. Unless there are new features in PM ver 5.

To move the data from Win98 to a second drive, you will need to create a secondary partition, and then withen that partition an exteneded partition. To have dual boot you will need to have two primary partitions.

My advice to you is to create a second primary partition and tell PM to place the new partition in front of the old one. After this start the dual boot option in partition magic. It will take .5 meg to make a dual boot section for you.

This is what I did. I had 2gb fot NT (ntfs), 2gb for win95(fat16), and the rest of my 6.4gb drive where data drives that both partitions could see (i.e. secondary/extended)(also fat16)

Hope this helps,
Banti

[AuraEdge]

You dont need a second drive. I have partition Magic 5 and used it on my 20.5 WD drive. If you are using the whole drive as a first partition, just tell it to resize the partition down. It will then, after the operation is complete, show you a 6 gig drive and 6.5 gigs unallocated (or should).
Then you can make a new partition.
Did the operation complete? I dont think you need a restart unless theres some operations you have to do through MS-DOS. Make sure you wait until all of them are done before you restart (it may appear to freeze sometimes, but moving all that data isnt easy).

Im sorry I wasnt of more help if you have already tried all this.

[Mntsnow]

Also make sure you click on the "APPLY" button http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif.....This was the problem my wife was having ROFL

Mntsnow

[CMonster]

Yep, basically you got the advice already. There are a lot of options. Resize the existing partition and create free space - you can choose to create the free space at the beggining or end of the existing partition. Hit the apply button and let your Partition Magic go to DOS and do its thing. Next, when you are back in Windows again you can create any partitions in the free space and choose the options for them you want.

You did not waste $69, that is a great program. The only thing PM5 failed to do for me was be able to resize a BeOS partition.

[800XL]

I understand the goal here, and it looks like you are just missing a step along the way.

You could prolly get by using Fdisk to create the second partition, and a logical drive within that partition. Then format that drive.

Moving the apps is tough, as they may need to be reinstalled for all the registry settings to point to the right places. It seems I had a utility to do this, Magic Mover, and it came with Drive Image. Maybe it came with Partition Magic too. That would be a big help.

Once you get down to a smaller boot drive, then shrink that partition to less than 2 gigs and FAT16 it from FAT32. Then you can install NT to the boot partition, making sure you have enough space for NT, as you can't install any of it to a FAT32 partition, or even see the FAT32 section for that matter. NT will only read the FAT16 part of the disk, or an NTFS partition if you make one. (Which Win98 will not be able to see.)

Not a simple process to say the least, but I think I covered the basic steps. I would just use fdisk for making the 2nd partition as it is probably what you are used to using. Make sure you make the partition, and create a logical drive in it though. You need both.

[Banti]

AuraEdge,

All I meant was that PM could not convert a secondary/extended partition into a primary partition (if that was what was intended). Since having two primary partitions is technically a no-no.

[Ed_S]

Just wanted to add this - After reading a lot of raves about PM, I bought it (this was 4.0) On first usage, I had hard lockup while resizing, and it scrambled everything on two partitions, and quite a bit on a third.
Now I know it's a good util & I must have screwed up, but still - it happened.

Be careful, I lost about 2G & still don't know what it all was. Have been studying recovery methods (drive is untouched & on the shelf)

[Glytzhkof]

Ed_S: Man, tough luck! I wish you good luck with the recovery techniques, but I don't think you'll be able to do it unless you hand it over to professionals (don't mean to underestimate you, but that drive is binary soup now). In any event you have a serious challenge waiting for you there! Hope you didn't lose anything essential.

[bobcat]

ED_S; If you are thinking about Lost&Found...becareful, I bought the bloody software @ $69, and it would see all Partitions for source, but would not see any partitions as destination so I could recover the Partition but had nowhere to store it.

[Rookie]

Mr Ed, what I'm about to describe is beyond my skills, but a friend of mine on a techhelp mailing list was able to recover from what you describe with linux. He scrambled a windows drive using PM and was able to redo the partitions with lilo, or something to that effect. At least he was able to save his data that way.
Like I said earlier- this is beyond my skills- just offering a possible way to recover. I did get redhat 6.0 to install but didnt do much with it as I will need a different isp to use it online. My kids would stop using the computers if I didnt have some form of aol at home, it will have to wait until after Christmas.
hth
Rookie

[xtant]

I've used PM v2 a while ago and liked it, so I got a hold of a copy of v3 from work. My drive is formatted to fat32 and it doesn't recognize the partition. I got all of the latest product updates to PM and it says the drive is formatted as FAT32X and that it's an unreadable partition.
It's no big loss, since it was a free copy, but I would like to use it and it should work - it's supposed to support fat32.

[Junky]

I think you have to have version 4 and above to work with fat32.

I have version 5, just got it, haven't had any time to use it. I upgraded from version 2. That old version worked great. But every time I created a new partition I'd have to remember to "un-hide" or make that partion active. Otherwise I'd forget and exit the PM program and there wouldn't be the new partition anywhere. I'd have to go back in and un-hide it.

Just a thought, maybe this is happening with bigslammer.