PartitionMagic 8.0 has been tested and is supported on drives up to 300 GB when the partition is less than 90 percent full. Larger hard drives may require additional memory. For more information, see the document New features in Norton PartitionMagic 8.0.

Is there a way to use a bootable CD as the PartitionMagic rescue disk?

There is no need to make a bootable PartitionMagic CD. The PartitionMagic 8.0 program CD is already bootable and allows you to run PartitionMagic from it.

Will PartitionMagic run natively on my operating system?

PartitionMagic 8.0 runs natively on the following operating systems:

• Windows 95b
• Windows 98
• Windows Me
• Windows 2000 Professional
• Windows XP SP1
• Windows NT 4.0 Workstation SP6a
• DOS

For all other supported operating systems, run PartitionMagic from rescue diskettes or from a native installation on another partition.

Will PartitionMagic run under Linux?

PartitionMagic does not run natively under Linux. You can manipulate Linux partitions by running PartitionMagic from another operating system or from the PartitionMagic rescue diskettes.

Does PartitionMagic support servers?

PartitionMagic does not support server environments or server operating systems. It is designed as a workstation tool only. Symantec offers ServerMagic for imaging of servers.

Will PartitionMagic convert NTFS partitions to FAT or FAT32?

Yes. As with any file system conversion, make sure that your operating system supports the file system before you perform the conversion. When you convert from NTFS to a FAT or FAT32 file system, you lose the advantages of the NTFS file system. You may receive errors 1680, 1681, and 1687 when performing this conversion. These errors indicate that features of NTFS will be lost.

What will happen to my CD-ROM drive letter if I create a new partition?

When you create a new partition on a Windows 9.x system, the CD-ROM is assigned the next available drive letter after your hard drive partitions. To prevent the drive letter from changing in the future, you may want to assign a higher drive letter such as M or N to the CD-ROM when in DOS or Windows 95. On Windows NT/2000/XP, new partitions will take the next available drive letter, leaving the CD-ROM drive letter intact.

Does PartitionMagic work with compressed drives or compression software?

Yes. However, PartitionMagic works only on the host drive. PartitionMagic cannot modify the compressed volume in any way. Compressed drives are made up of two partitions: the compressed volume and the host drive. The compressed volume contains the actual data and the host volume contains information on how to access the compressed volume. To reduce the size of a partition that is compressed, you must first use the compression software to reduce the size of the compressed volume (or increase the amount of uncompressed free space on the drive). By doing this, PartitionMagic is given enough space to "resize" the host partition. When creating new partitions on a compressed volume, you need to make sure that any new partitions are created after the host volume. This is because the host and compressed volumes are linked together by the drive letters; if the drive letter assigned to the host volume changes, you will not be able to access the compressed volume.

PartitionMagic may not be able to run natively from Windows if drive C has been compressed. If this is the case, run PartitionMagic from the rescue diskettes.

Warning

It is not advisable to merge compressed drives. This could cause the data on the compressed volume to become inaccessible.

Does PartitionMagic work with SCSI drives? Why doesn't it see mine?

PartitionMagic does work with SCSI drives as long as the drive has software INT13 capabilities. Most SCSI drives allow you to enable this option in their setup; however, some do not. INT13 is what PartitionMagic uses to communicate with the drive. By simply turning on this feature, PartitionMagic should recognize the drive without any problems. An easy way to see whether your drive is set up to use INT13 is to type FDISK /STATUS at a command prompt. If FDISK sees the drive properly, you will have no problem using PartitionMagic to partition your drive.

PartitionMagic does work with SCSI drives as long as the drive has software INT13 capabilities. Most SCSI drives allow you to enable this option in their setup; however, some do not. INT13 is what PartitionMagic uses to communicate with the drive. By simply turning on this feature, PartitionMagic should recognize the drive without any problems. An easy way to see whether your drive is set up to use INT13 is to type the following at the command prompt:

FDISK /STATUS

If FDISK sees the drive properly, you will have no problem using PartitionMagic to partition your drive.

How do I handle errors 100-199?

If PartitionMagic does not automatically fix these errors, a sure way to resolve these errors it to do the following:

 

1 Back up all the data that is in the defective partitions.

2 Delete the defective partitions.

3 Create new partitions.

4 Restore all your data to the new partitions.

How do I handle errors 1500-1699?

These errors are related to the file system of operating systems based on Windows NT® technology (Windows NT/2000/XP). In most cases, running CHKDSK on the partition will fix the error. For additional information, search the PartitionMagic Knowledge Base for the specific error number, or read How to run Microsoft's CHKDSK from the command line.

How do I handle errors 1500-1699?

These errors are related to the file system of operating systems based on Windows NT® technology (Windows NT/2000/XP). In most cases, running CHKDSK on the partition will fix the error. For additional information, search the PartitionMagic Knowledge Base for the specific error number, or read How to run Microsoft's CHKDSK from the command line.

How do I handle errors 2000-2999?

In Windows 9x, run ScanDisk. In Windows NT/2000/XP, run CHKDSK. For additional information, search the PartitionMagic Knowledge Base for the specific error number, or read either How to run Microsoft's CHKDSK from the command line or Checking for disk errors using ScanDisk.

How are drive letters assigned to the new partitions that I create?

The task of assigning drive letters is performed by the operating system (that is, DOS, Windows, or OS/2) and not PartitionMagic. DOS assigns drive letters in the following order:

1 The active primary partition on the first physical drive is labeled C.

2 The active primary partition on the second physical drive (if one exists) is labeled D, and so on until all active partitions on all available drives have been assigned drive letters.

3 The logical drives are labeled, starting with logical drives on the first physical drive, then the logical drives on the second physical drive, and so on.

4 Your CD-ROM and any removable drives are assigned the next available drive letters after your hard drive partitions. For example, if you have C, D, and E partitions on your hard drive, your CD-ROM would become drive F.

For more information on how DOS and Windows 9x/Me assign drive letters, read How are drive letters assigned in Windows 9x/Me and DOS?

In Windows NT/2000/XP, drive letters can be manually assigned using Disk Administrator or PartitionMagic.

Why can't I create more than four primary partitions?

This is a limitation of the Master Boot Record. The Master Boot Record has the capacity to define up to four partition table entries, one of which can be an extended partition. The IBM Boot Manager and other diagnostic partition types also take "slots" or entries within the Master Boot Record.

When performing an operation in PartitionMagic (resize, move, and so forth), I see a black rectangle on the screen and the computer beeps. Why?

The black rectangle and beeping noise are caused when virus or boot-sector protection is enabled in your BIOS. You may also see an Error 58 message along with the black rectangle. Disable the virus or boot-sector protection, and you should have no problem using PartitionMagic to partition your hard drive.

Partitions created or manipulated by PartitionMagic are written and stored on the hard drive. PartitionMagic makes changes to the partitions you want to change, and then writes those changes to the hard drive in the Master Boot Record. If PartitionMagic is corrupted or deleted, the partitions remain unaffected on the hard drive.

I want my drive back the way it was. How can I uninstall PartitionMagic?

The partitions created and manipulated by PartitionMagic cannot be "uninstalled." If you want to put your hard drive back to the way it was before you used PartitionMagic, you must use PartitionMagic to return all partitions back to their original configurations (which may involve deleting, resizing, moving, and so forth). If you want to remove the PartitionMagic program from your computer (which will not affect your partition configuration, other than to free up disk space), use the Add/Remove Programs feature in Windows Control Panel to uninstall PartitionMagic.

Does PartitionMagic run in the background? Will it degrade system performance?

PartitionMagic does not run in the background. After changes have been written to the Master Boot Record, PartitionMagic exits.

What do the two small triangles under the partition map in PartitionMagic represent?

These two triangles, one darker than the other, are pointers.

The darkest of the two triangles represents the 1024 cylinder boundary. This boundary is not in the same place on all hard disks; its exact location depends on the drive translation in the CMOS. For some operating systems to be bootable, the partition on which they are installed must start within the first 1024 cylinders of the drive.

The lighter of the two triangles represents the 2 GB boundary. (This pointer is not displayed for drives smaller than 2 GB.) For some operating systems to be bootable, the partition on which they are installed cannot extend beyond the first 2 GB of the drive.

Whenever I try to use the Copy feature in the rescue diskette version of PartitionMagic, it is dimmed. How do I get it to work?

The Copy feature in PartitionMagic is designed to copy existing partitions to unpartitioned, unformatted free space (unallocated space) that is the same size or larger than the partition being copied. (Unallocated space is displayed as a gray bar in the graphical partition map in PartitionMagic.) The copy feature is dimmed if there is not enough contiguous unallocated space on the drive to copy any of the existing partitions. To enable the Copy feature, create unallocated space by either resizing existing partitions and moving them around to consolidate the unallocated space, or delete a partition you do not need.

Should I uninstall my older versions of PartitionMagic and BootMagic before installing PartitionMagic 8.0 and BootMagic 8.0?

Yes, it is best to uninstall the older versions first. This can be done through Add/Remove Programs in Windows Control Panel, or by running the setup executable of the older version of PartitionMagic and choosing the Remove option. After the previous program is removed, then install PartitionMagic 8.0.

I have a block of unallocated space after my C partition, but I am unable to resize my C partition. What am I doing wrong?

There are three reasons why you would be unable to resize a partition that has unallocated space immediately to the right of it.

First, the unallocated space may reside within an extended partition. All you need to do is select the extended partition, choose the Resize/Move option in PartitionMagic, and move the left border of the extended partition to the right. This will move some unallocated space outside the extended partition.

Second, you may be attempting to resize the partition across a cluster boundary, and you do not have enough free space inside the partition to allow the clusters to be resized.

Following is a chart that shows different cluster boundaries and the space needed inside a partition to resize it across those boundaries.

Cluster Boundary	Space Needed to Resize	Cluster Size
128 MB	8 MB	2 KB to 4 KB
256 MB	41 MB	4 KB to 8 KB
511 MB	205 MB	8 KB to 16 KB
1023 MB	564 MB	16 KB to 32 KB

Third, if the partition that you are trying to resize uses the FAT16 file system, the partition may already be at its maximum size. Partitions that use the FAT16 file system are limited to a size of 2 GB. If the partition is at this limit, you must convert it to FAT32 or NTFS before you can increase its size.