Norton Partition Magic on dual boot XP/Vista?

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Heliocentrical

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I dual boot XP and Vista. I have Partiton Magic 8.0 which I've used in XP prior to adding Vista. What happens if I use it now that I also have Vista installed on the same disk. My plan is to resize the XP partition to allow more space for Vista. Will it work? Or will it corrupt the Vista install?

Thanks.
 
I don't use Partition Magic, but I have done the exact same thing, successfully, using GParted, and had no problems.
 
It works with alot of filesystems.. fat, ext, ntfs.. It is a *nix based app but it will work with Windows just fine, I use it all the time. Download the live cd and try it out.
 
You can think of GParted as an open source version of Partition Magic that is so much more capable - and updated as required. Partition Magic is almost a dead product as far as Norton/Symantec is concerned; they're not going to be updating it anytime soon.

In light of that, GParted is fine for most people. I use Acronis Disk Director myself.
 
Understand that I am not questioning, just asking, if you will.....

What does Disk Director do that GParted doesn't.. and what makes it better?
 
I covered my ass that time by not saying anything about one being better than the other for any reason, not even as my opinion - I simply said I use Disk Director myself. :)

I'll let you read for yourself and form your own opinions:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/

NOTE: I don't use the Windows version of the software, that's effectively useless for most purposes that I have. I installed the software inside a VM (purchased copy of Disk Director) and then created the recovery CD ISO the software will create for you, stashed that in a shared folder from the VM onto the host OS, then burned it. Deleted the VM I started with and restored a backup fresh copy so it was clean again (no traces of Disk Director) and then I had my nice shiny freshly burned CD that I use for all my Disk Director schtuffz.

:D
 
Thanks.. and I'll be looking into it, seems like an interesting alternative..

But, to the op, again, I assure you if you use GParted correctly, it will do what you need it to do..
 
digital_exhaust said:
Thanks.. and I'll be looking into it, seems like an interesting alternative..

But, to the op, again, I assure you if you use GParted correctly, it will do what you need it to do..
Click to expand...

Well...that didnt work.

Here's what I had:

XP - 60gig
Vista - 20gig
Data - 120gig

This is what I wanted:
XP - 40gig
Vista - 40gig
Data - 120gig

This is what I ended up with:
XP - 20gig
Vista - 20gig
Data - 120gig
New Volume - 20gig

Apparently, you cant resize a Vista partition by taking space from another using this program. I tried shrinking the XP partition then resizing the Vista partition but it refused to pick up the unallocated space. I then tried formating the space so I could attempt the merge partitions but I wasnt able to merge the partitions either.

Now I've got another 20gig partition. Any more ideas?
 
Aratech said:
Well...that didnt work.

Here's what I had:

XP - 60gig
Vista - 20gig
Data - 120gig

This is what I wanted:
XP - 40gig
Vista - 40gig
Data - 120gig

This is what I ended up with:
XP - 20gig
Vista - 20gig
Data - 120gig
New Volume - 20gig

Apparently, you cant resize a Vista partition by taking space from another using this program. I tried shrinking the XP partition then resizing the Vista partition but it refused to pick up the unallocated space. I then tried formating the space so I could attempt the merge partitions but I wasnt able to merge the partitions either.

Now I've got another 20gig partition. Any more ideas?
Click to expand...

djnes?:D
 
I haven't gotten into using PM with Vista, since I have no reason to dual boot. Do you have a specific reason why you need both OSes, or could you get away with using Virtual PC 2007?

I run PM off of a USB Thumb Drive in DOS, which might yield better results. I don't like installing programs that I don't use regularly. I've also never used GPart, so I can't comment much on that. I'm guessing the interface wasn't as straightforward as PM's?
 
djnes said:
I haven't gotten into using PM with Vista, since I have no reason to dual boot. Do you have a specific reason why you need both OSes, or could you get away with using Virtual PC 2007?
XP runs so well...I guess I'm just trying to hold on to it as long as I can. I'm not familiar with VPC 07 or how it works. I need to read up on it.

I run PM off of a USB Thumb Drive in DOS, which might yield better results. I don't like installing programs that I don't use regularly.
Same here.

I've also never used GPart, so I can't comment much on that. I'm guessing the interface wasn't as straightforward as PM's?
Right. I looked everywhere and couldnt find an option to merge the blank partition with the Vista partition. Vista had an "extend" option but was unable to see the extra space unallocated or not.
Click to expand...

Answers.
 
I downloaded GPart, since so many recommend it, and I'll give it a shot on a test computer I have...to see what it's like.

EDIT: I used GParted on a test machine running Vista Business. I shrunk the 80 GB partition (C:) to 50 GB and rebooted. That worked fine. I then went back in to GParted and resized the partition back to using the whole drive, and agani Vista booted okay.

I'm not sure how you went about editing your partitions. I right clicked on the partition of choice, and chose to resize it. I'm wondering if you put the sizes in the wrong boxes, like where it asks for space before partition, size of partition, and space after it.

It seems like you could go in to GParted, delete that New Volume, and then resize your partitions as needed, just like PM used to do.
 
djnes said:
I downloaded GPart, since so many recommend it, and I'll give it a shot on a test computer I have...to see what it's like.

EDIT: I used GParted on a test machine running Vista Business. I shrunk the 80 GB partition (C:) to 50 GB and rebooted. That worked fine. I then went back in to GParted and resized the partition back to using the whole drive, and agani Vista booted okay.

I'm not sure how you went about editing your partitions. I right clicked on the partition of choice, and chose to resize it. I'm wondering if you put the sizes in the wrong boxes, like where it asks for space before partition, size of partition, and space after it.

It seems like you could go in to GParted, delete that New Volume, and then resize your partitions as needed, just like PM used to do.
Click to expand...

Okay. I figured that part out. I was able to add the space back to the XP partiton.

What I originaly wanted to do was take that space from XP and add it to Vista. I was able to shrink XP but couldnt add the newly freed space to Vista. Make sense?
 
Just making sure I understand.. You are unable to "re-size" the Vista partition using GParted, right? I cannot see any reason why that wouldn't work, but when I get home I'll try it and see if I'm missing something. I would think that selecting the Vista partition and re-sizing it would work, as I'm nearly sure I've done this with GParted.

If I'm misunderstanding you, please let me know..
 
I think I see what you mean. I did give GParted a try on a spare computer, and I really like it. It seems to process the commands faster, and complete the jobs faster than PM did.
 
I have had great success with GParted, although it can be a little confusing at first for some. The interface is a little different, but I think that most will find it really does work alot better than PM.. and it is faster, especially with larger volumes.
 
I tried merging partitions within GParted (LiveCD) and wasn't able to find an option to do that. Anyone with experience with GParted know if that's possible?

Anyway, I also use Disk Director because it's the only partitioning program I know of that works from within Vista (x64 for me) (version 10.0.2160 or later). Partition Magic isn't Vista compatible.

Vista at default settings hibernates after an hour of no user activity, and that almost made me lose my data after that happened while I left the process on unattended (even in the pre-startup screen), so be sure to turn it off.
 
GParted works with Vista just fine, and any os for that matter, for obvious reasons.

As far as merging two partitions, if there is data you need to keep on both partitions, I'm not sure I would try to do something like that... Your best/safest bet would be to backup the data on one of the partitions, delete that partition and then resize the one you have kept to the size you desire.
 
digital_exhaust said:
Just making sure I understand.. You are unable to "re-size" the Vista partition using GParted, right? I cannot see any reason why that wouldn't work, but when I get home I'll try it and see if I'm missing something. I would think that selecting the Vista partition and re-sizing it would work, as I'm nearly sure I've done this with GParted.

If I'm misunderstanding you, please let me know..
Click to expand...
You understand me completely.

digital_exhaust said:
GParted works with Vista just fine, and any os for that matter, for obvious reasons.

As far as merging two partitions, if there is data you need to keep on both partitions, I'm not sure I would try to do something like that... Your best/safest bet would be to backup the data on one of the partitions, delete that partition and then resize the one you have kept to the size you desire.
Click to expand...
There is only data on the Vista partition. The other partition is formatted. I didnt see an option to merge the two so I deleting the empty partition making it unallocated and then tried to resize the Vista partition. The dialog box has the extend option blanked and the resize option only lets me shrink the partition.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I used PM to create the partitions in the first place. I may just go with djnes suggestion... dump the dual boot setup, and go all Vista.
 
You cannot really merge two partitions together
You can delete one partition and re-size the other one into that space and that does work

I recently had to shrink an NTFS (doesn't matter what Windows OS installed on it, its the filesystem that is important) so that I could copy-install a Linux distro onto my work machine

so it works fine
 
I wiped the entire drive with gparted, created two new partitons, one for the OS and one for data and then formatted them in NTFS. I then installed Vista and booted to the desktop. Next, I decided to do a quick format on the empty data partition before restoring my files and got the message "Windows was unable to complete the format ". Does have anything to do with the fact that the partitions were created and formated with gparted?
 
It shouldn't, I've used Gparted to format to NTFS many times... there has got to be something simple here that we are overlooking... What version of GParted are you using??
 
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