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[DanMaggot]

I've got a large external hd on order and am planning to partition it into about 6 unequal partitions. I've had problems with Partition Manager (PartitionMagic) under XP before so I'm looking for an alternative and have read a few good things about this one. (It also includes a free defragger which is something else on the wish list)

Has anyone got personal experience of the proggy, either good or bad?

Cheers

[Spook Tooth]

Sorry but no.

Good luck with the project though, Mr Maggot. Remember that even HDD's are prone to data loss/breakdown so I hope if you plan to archive stuff, you'll be doing other back ups of anything important...

[DanMaggot]

Well, yes, but also don't forget that both cd and Dvd disks are also prone to data loss.......in other words you need a belts and braces approach.

(Though I invested in an external dvd recorder a while back so at least it's saved in 4gb chunks now rather than the 650mb on cd.)

But partitioning should help with some of this data protection as will regular defragging (currently it takes 4-6 hours to defrag an 80gb drive - which is why it doesn't get done often enough.) <_<

[Mundy]

Dan, XP will partition your new drive into whatever size segments you want.

I tend to defrag every 6 to 8 weeks even if its not required, takes about hour if not less for my 80gb drive. Takes a lot longer if your drive is fragmented. :D

[PilchY]

Start - Run - diskmgmt.msc

Nice little freebie there mate!

[DanMaggot]

Thanks folks, I intend to give XP's tool a try first. Hope it copes with an external drive.

[PilchY]

I actually found this via powerless....

hopefully, it should work...

[PilchY]

well dan?

[DanMaggot]

Ha. Sorry. You're right I should have done an update.

Simply put use XP itself and it's disk tools.

As the drive came already formatted in win32 I had to "um and ah" a while as I couldn't find the option to partition. However in the end I realised I had first to format it again. I decided to use NTFS as the type of format as this is supposed to be best for use with XP and most economical space wise. So I did a quick format with that option and had myself a bit under a 250gb chunk.

At this point you've got the option to make different kinds of partitions and there doesn't seem to be much difference but from what I read if you want 4 or less partitions then you can make Primary partitions,(or a primary partition and 3 logical drives in an extended partition) if you want more than 4 then you're best of making an Extended Partition into which you create multiple logical drives which is what I went for.
I wanted roughly a mirror drive to my main system, a scratch drive purely for photoshop, and then a series of drives of about 40gb.

In the end it was far easier to do this than it was to use Partition Magic way back when I had Win98se. This said, I was playing with a blank drive. I think you'd need third party software to do it if you had a full drive.