Cheap Norton PartitionMagic 8.0 - Create, Resize, Copy Partitions (Software) (Windows XP) Price

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Customer Reviews of Norton PartitionMagic 8.0 - Create, Resize, Copy Partitions

Incompatible with Vista
This was a fantastic product before Symantec bought it from PowerQuest a few years ago. It allowed you to partition drives, resize partitions, and shift partitions up or down to make room for adjacent partitions that need more space. It still does all this on Windows XP but... <
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>... It is not compatible with Vista. And as of today, there is no update for it on the Symantec website. I was more than a little disappointed to discover this. I would have thought that a company like Symantec would have had its act together and not still be selling software that is incompatible with the latest Microsoft operating system, which comes on all the new consumer-level computers. <
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>There are at least two other third-party partitioning products that are Vista compatible now (try searching for "Paragon" or "Acronis"). Your other option is to use the built-in partitioning functionality in Vista (click on the Start Menu; right click "Computer"; choose "Manage"; then choose "Storage" and "Disk Management"). However it's not as user friendly and has only limited resizing options.

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Norton PartitionMagic 8.0
Great product! This piece of software helped me correct something that I had been ignoring for several years. It was easy to understand and use and pricing wasn't too bad. The only question I have is: Why hasn't Microsoft included something similar in its Windows products?

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Outdated and troublesome program
Partition magic came out around 2000 as PowerQuest Partition Magic 6.0. <
>In 2002 it was updated by PowerQuest to Version 8 but has not been updated since. It still looks and acts like the original version which means that it works sometimes, for certain drives. There is an update to version 8.01 that came about 4 years ago but it fails with Error '1628, Failed to complete Installation'. I have not found any info on how to get past that error. <
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>I have built and repaired computers for many years and have used this product for 4 years, and version 6 since 2000. <
>Sometimes it works fine if your partition is in perfect condition. But quite often, it will not work and it just stops with one of a thousand possible errors. This includes drives and partitions that work perfectly and exhibit no symptoms of any kind. You try to copy the drive and the program errors out and stops. Usually there is no solution. <
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>Look up "Partition Magic" error on Google,. there are about 1,200,000 results showing all the problems such as error number: <
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>301 The file could not be opened <
>302 The file could not be closed <
>311 Unable to set the file attributes <
>1123 Too many references in table <
>1526 Directory entry too long <
>1532 Too few clusters <
>1533 Too many clusters <
>1534 Cluster not allocated <
>1535 External attribute list wrong length <
>1536 Nonresident attribute too short <
>1537 File number greater than 4 billion <
>1538 Can't find contiguous space to move <
>1619 Bad pointer in security descriptor <
>1652 Bad entry in external attribute list <
>1685 Multiple long names or links <
>2021 Data in the disk is not aligned as expected <
>2023 Data on the partition is preventing the operation <
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>There are thousands more and often when it says it finished ok, you still end up with a drive that won't boot with no explanation why. I have certainly spent considerable time trying to get this product to work and I'd say it does work about 60% of the time. <
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>Runnng Chkdsk /f several times will solve some errors. I backup partitions almost every week including FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS partition both old and new that are all running fine with no bad sectors and chkdsk says they are fine. But, at least 40% of the time Partition Magic (and it's partner Drive Image) just can't do it. <
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>There are some excellent, free, Linux boot CD based utilities such as GPartedLive boot CD that work fine for most tasks including working on Windows drives. On the contrary, Partition Magic has limited support for Linux and seems unable to do even the most tasks on Unix or Linux. <
>It also appears to do some non-standard operations on Windows disks that you will find out about when you try to run other disk utilities. <
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>By the way, be sure to never add a DDO (Dynamic Drive Overlay) to your disk unless you absolutely have to. That's how drive manufacturers tried to get older mainboards to recognize large disks by adding a boot sector program or overlay. Once that's installed your repair and recovery options are very limited. Nothing else can access the disk if it can't boot up by itself. That's bad. So don't use the disks that come with a new hard drive unless you read all the options carefully. Mainly don't load an overlay program, you don't need it and it will do non-standard things to your drive without much warning. Use the standard Windows/etc tools to setup your drive. <
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>Partition Magic 8 has some good points. <
>It has a clear graphical interface and is easy to use. <
>It starts fast and gives a warning before committing changes to your drive. <
>It handles FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS partitions from NT, 2000 and XP (each has a different NTFS version). <
>And it includes the ability to make bootable floppies so you can access the main program that way. <
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>If your partition has any hidden issues, or seemingly none at all, the program will fail and you will have to find another program to copy the drive. Their "solution" is to backup all your data, repartition and format your drive, re-install Windows and all your programs and then try their program again. Nice solution. 5 years ago, Partition Magic was updated regularly when it was maintained by the developer, PowerQuest. Then Symantec bought it and they appear to have no interest in supporting or updating products they acquire through business transactions. The bottom line is if you can get this really cheap after rebate then give it a try, it will work for most cases. But it's too outdated and fussy for regular use when you have a job to do. <
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>There are much better products out there including those with far more features that can backup drives in realtime as you are using them, they can make a compressed image of a drive or partition for later recovery including small incremental backups, and they can backup a drive over the network or to CD/DVD, etc. Even some free programs can do that but Partition Magic can't do any of that. <
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