Questions about Partition Magic

If you use Partition Magic and create new partitions you'll have the same drive letter problem. EXAMPLE: if your CD-Rom is currently the D: drive and you add one partition then the new partition becomes D: and the CD-Rom will get bumped to the letter E:.

Partition Magic includes a utility which I believe it's called Magic Mover. This utility can be run after creating the new partition and it will scan your icons and programs allowing you to change the associations that point to the CD-Rom without having to reinstall the software.

I've used Partition Magic on my 13 gig drive and have experienced no problems. The mover utility worked like it should and saved the re-installation problem. The new partition does save time with scandisk and defragging and limits your loss in case of a reformat.

The only thing to consider is that repartitioning may destroy the hidden ZZTop image file that is on your hard drive. The image file has a limited life span before being corrupted by normal hard drive activity. Prior to repartitioning my drive the image file was already trashed so I found it a very minor concern before repartitioning.

As well as listening to Majestic's advice, you can hurry a scan by typing contrl, alt, delete, and closing all programs except systray and explorer. Making smaller drives will not really help because the total disk space remains the same. I personally don't think it is useful to repartition because you then have to make certain they don't overfill. Partition Magic is useful if you want to add a second hard drive.

True, the total size of the hard drive remains the same, but with a little pre-planning on how you going to use the partitions can help in faster scandisks and defrags. On my system the C: partition is used for the operating system and all program files like internet software, word processing, utilities, etc. My D: drive contains just games of which some games use quite a bit of space. With this arrangement my C: drive has the majority of disk activity and therefore becomes the most defragment. I can then run scandisk and defrag in less time because I'm just concentrating on my operating system and frequently used programs without having to defrag the large game files. On my older Compaq with Windows 95, I took the partitioning idea one step further and created a partition just for the Windows Swap file. With this arrangement the swap file data is on it's own drive and the information is stored continuous without getting inter-mix with other programs.

Managing partitions does require you to keep in mind their size and how they are being filled. On my D: drive I have already resized it larger due to some games I received a x-mas requiring a very larger amount of disk space. With Partition Magic the resizing of a partition can be done very easy.

Thanks to Majestic and Perplexed for the quick response. I'm glad to know about
the Magic Mover part of PM this will save a bit of work. My other machine has 3
partitions that I had a tech friend put in when I first got it and I have no trouble
overloading the partitions and it's much faster to defrag and run scan disk on one
partition at a time then to do it all at once.

I have been a Dell owner since Jan. 2000 and am very happy with it especially these
forums. My other machine is a Gateway G6 350 Pll and I am also very happy with it
also. Both companys have great support but these forums make Dell a standout.

Thanks again to all the contributors.

Howard1

First off a little correction on that utility name. The correct name would be Drive Mapper and it's also included with Partition Magic. It's been a while since I first used it so please forgive the error.

Secondly what you might consider is assigning your CD-Rom drive the letter "Z." I've found this useful as you can add hard drives and play around with partitions without future worries about software not finding the CD-Rom and having to run Drive Mapper. If your interested let me know and I'll post the procedure for the both DOS and Windows. That way your covered in both operating systems.

Thanks for the addition (Drive Mapper) Majestic.
I would appreciate the instructions for Windows only. I know nothing about DOS
and am not too anxious to learn as I might get into trouble using it, but if you know
of a web site where I could learn a few basic commands in DOS that might help me
overcome my fear.
Howard1

For Windows....

Goto Control Panel and then click on the System Icon.
Then select Device Manager and double click on the CD-Rom.
Then highlight your CD-Rom and click on the Properties button.
Then choose the Setting tab and then choose the letter Z for
your Starting and Ending drive letter.
After you re-boot your CD-Rom will become the Z: drive.

As for the DOS lesson, the best I could recommend is one of the "DOS for Dummies" book out there. It's a good book and explains thing in plain english.

Majestic, thanks again. I imagine that I do the CD-Rom change after installing
Partition Magic. I have the program already ( P.M. 5.0) and in reading the User Guide that comes
with it, it says to let the DriveMapper program handle that. It says it will make the
partitions as I wish and then will assign them letters in alphbetical order including
the assigning of the CD and CD-RW. It looks like I may not have a choice in what
letters I want to use. I want to have the hard drive in 3 partitions, which will be
C,D and E and my CD and CD-RW will change to F and G. I really would like to have
the CD drives lower on the scale as I also have a USB Zip drive that I have disconnected from
the electric outlet right now and it doesn't show up as a drive letter when it is disconnected
(must remember to connect it before I install P.M.)

I had to do the fix that you suggest for my other machine and Tweak UI saved my bacon on
that one as it was the only way I could activate the drive letter to make win.95 recognize it.

Now I'm in a quandary as to do the CDs the way you suggest or do it by the book, Please advise.

Thanks, Howard1

Do all your re-partitioning with Partition Magic first and let it assign the drive letters. Once you are done using Partition Magic then manually assign the CD-Rom drive a letter. After taking care of the drive letter assignment then run the Drive Mapper utility.

I see you also have a CD-RW. What I did on my system was assign the CD-RW the drive letter 'Z" and the CD-Rom the drive letter "Y." With this arrangement of assigning drive letters you can now plug in your zip drive whenever and not worry about it changing the CD drives' letter assignments. Your zip drive would always be F: when plugged in.

Yes, if you have TweakUi installed then you have to check the box by all the drives in My Computer that you want Windows to display. It's no big problem, the drive was always there, but TweakUi was preventing Windows from displaying it. Had you not had TweakUi installed there wouldn't have been a problem. If you have TweakUi installed on your Dell, you have to do the same thing.

Majestic, your last post cleared things up well for me, thanks. I haven't installed Tweak UI on this machine as of yet so I won't need to fool around with it. I will have the USB Zip connected when I do the Partition
Magic install so it shouldn't be a problem either. I will then have C,D and E as hard drive partitions, the Zip as F and place the CDs as X and Y. You have really been a big help for me, I have had the program for about a month now and just haven't gotten around to asking about how it would install. (a little scared, I guess!)

Howard1

Back a few years with my old Compaq I got a little nervous when I decided to repartition my hard drive with Partition Magic version 2.0. You have doubts as to it working and if it was going to trash the hard drive. In the case of my Compaq I wanted it to dual boot Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 so there was an extra element of worry. I found Partition Magic worked very well and made repartitioning, resizing and moving partitions easy. Since then I have used versions 3.0, 4.0 and now version 5.0 of Partiton Magic and have never had a problem. With each version Power Quest improves on the original product.

I'll keep monitoring this topic and please let me know if you encounter any problems that I may be of help.

Hi Majestic, I haven't been monitoring this forum for the last couple of days, but I
have installed PM and had no problems with that. It's really great, I moved the
wrong program the very first thing (dumb) but after thinking it over, I just moved it
back to the C drive and everything worked fine with no further problems. It proved
to me that this program is worth the money if these are things you want to do. I
still have a few more programs to move around and don't think I will have any problems
with them.

Thanks again for your superb advice. Howard1

I'm always happy to help out. Glad to hear things are going good.