I'd have to say that this is the most amazing piece of software I have ever seen. It makes Hard Disk Partitioning, resizing and other associated tasks extremely easy to use. So easy that it isn't recommended for newbies. They may do something harmful without knowing what they are doing. The software is incredibly easy to use. There are adequate warnings and explanations for each task but the possibility of bungling remains high.

Partition Magic 6 includes new features such as support for Windows Millennium Edition and Windows 2000. Partition Magic now has a feature where all hard disks of the system can be seen in one view. The Partitions are color-coded. This helps in partition manipulation as different types of partitions are given different colors. FAT32 is olive green and FAT16 is olive green.

Partition Magic allows conversion to and from NTFS and Linux partitions. Most of the tasks are implemented through wizards and the partition manipulation is done graphically. The user has to stretch/contract the partition image to increase/decrease its size. Partition Magic has a Partition Splitting feature, which splits one partition into two according to the data to be sent to the second partition. The size of the two partitions cannot be determined directly by the user. It’s a function of the data being sent to the new partition. I found this inconvenient. If you need a different sized partition, you’ll need to resize it later.

Partition Magic lets the user do all tasks while being in Windows. PM makes a record of all changes to be made, and then needs to restart to apply the changes. The changes are made before Windows boots completely.

Partition Magic includes Drive Mapper that updates the drive-letter association of every file to take into account the modifications that have been made to the system.

BootMagic is another Bonus. It aids if you want to have more than one Operating System at a time on your computer. When the computer boots, the user is shown the list of operating systems installed on that computer.

You can convert a partition from FAT to FAT 32, FAT 32 to FAT, FAT to NTFS, et al.
Primary to logical and vice versa are also supported.

Partition Magic [www.powerquest.com] is available for $69.95. Upgrade from previous version is $29.95




Recommended: Yes