PowerQuest PartitionMagic 3 review

On average, one half cluster is wasted for every file on your hard disk.

So one way to increase the effective capacity of your hard disk is to reduce the partition size and hence the cluster size.

You can do this in Windows 95 but it means making a full backup of your existing partitions, running Fdisk to erase and redefine the partitions, reinstalling the operating system to support the backup program and then restoring the files to their destination partitions. You also have to allow for the change of drive letters, especially for CD-ROM applications.

The PartitionMagic utility can make changes to your partition structure, without the need to remove data from the drive.

You can select the cluster size that you want, or select the partition size, or merely drag the partition boundaries to revise the structure. All the changes are made on the fly and very rapidly. When you restart the system, you can use Applications Mover to redistribute your files and DriveMapper to update drive letter references.

As well as saving disk space, PartitionMagic helps you install and access different operating systems in each partition. You can select the operating system to start up with using Boot Manager (the same program as the one found in OS/2 Warp). This takes one of the four possible primary partitions, but allows you to boot an operating system from any one of the remaining three or even from a logical sub-partition. Alternatively, you can use the supplied PQBoot program to switch the available, bootable primary partition.

PartitionMagic can also be used to make an exact duplicate of a partition in free space on the same disk drive or on a second disk drive installed in the PC.

Author: - Mike Price