Partition Magic resize doesn't work for me

[Chrs]

I partitioned my Seagate 120GB HDD in 3 parts: 30GB for OS, 2GB for Swap, and remainder for Storage. I kept getting this message in my system tray saying that my Swap is full. I tried using Partition Magic to resize Swap and Storage partitions. When I rebooted, the resizing didn't even work. Then someone suggest I convert my HDD to dynamic disk. Once I did that I couldn't even use Partition Magic. Now I can't convert back to basic disk or extend the volumes using Windows Disk Management. Any suggestions?

I'm on WinXP SP2 logged on as the admin of course
All partitions are FAT32 and clusters at 32?

Should I just reformat and re-partition it with the Seagate software that I originally used to partition it? If so, should I go FAT32 or NTFS?

TIA

[Ice Czar]

save your data to media and start over (reformat)
then get a bat and beat the friend that suggested a dynamic disk within an inch of his life

and use NTFS next time, unless there is some truely compelling reason not to
even Linux can read them now-a-days

next time you want to resize with Partition Magic
perform one operation at a time with a reboot inbetween ;)
(resize>reboot>move>reboot>resize>reboot>ect)
most problems it runs into have to do with multiple tasks
and personally I avoid the merge option as well
and make those rescue disks ;)

FAQ > Advanced HDD Issues (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=485217) Linkfarm > Dynamic Disk Section
there arent many reasons to use Dynamic Disks, but if you do you need to read all those
its like a very unintelligible dialect of a language you speak, with special rules and circumstances
you cant revert a Dyanmic Disk back to a Basic Disk without loosing your data, or shelling out $$$ for special software

[Chrs]

save your data to media and start over (reformat)
then get a bat and beat the friend that suggested a dynamic disk within an inch of his life

and use NTFS next time, unless there is some truely compelling reason not to
even Linux can read them now-a-days

next time you want to resize with Partition Magic
perform one operation at a time with a reboot inbetween ;)
(resize>reboot>move>reboot>resize>reboot>ect)
most problems it runs into have to do with multiple tasks
and personally I avoid the merge option as well
and make those rescue disks ;)

FAQ > Advanced HDD Issues (http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=485217) Linkfarm > Dynamic Disk Section
there arent many reasons to use Dynamic Disks, but if you do you need to read all those
its like a very unintelligible dialect of a language you speak, with special rules and circumstances
you cant revert a Dyanmic Disk back to a Basic Disk without loosing your data, or shelling out $$$ for special software

looks like i'll be formatting

thanks!

[Chrs]

i couldn't get Seagate's CD to work to reformat and partition. it would load in that "special DOS mode" and say i have an "IDE CD-ROM drive installed" and stop right there. i ended up popping in a Win98 bootup disk and formatted with fdisk. now i have WinXP SP2 installed. i used Norton PartitionMagic to convert FAT32 to NTFS.

i tried to Create another partition, but the option is greyed out in PartitionMagic. i use the wizard performing only one operation. it restarts, but i still have 1 big partition.

any ideas?

[Ice Czar]

well the easiest thing is to drop it in another XP box and do it from Disk Management
regarding conversions of FAT32 to NTFS see this > http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php
(there is more than meets the eye)

you could always try the Ultimate Boot CD (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/)
zero the HDD with a single pass of DBAN or Autoclave and then format it with the XP install CD as NTFS