Partition Magic Question

SpecialT · 08-11-2004, 10:19

I have a question regarding Partition Magic. Might sound stupid but I am confused by Symantec's description of one of the key features.

It says "Partition Hard Drives as Large as 80 GB".

Are they talking about total hard drive size or the max size of a partition ? I currently have a 120 GB hard drive in my machine and it's a year old, so I'm assuming they mean max partition size ?

I've been lurking on Glocktalk for a while and reading the Tech Forum and it looks like someone always has the answer. I hope you can help.

Thanks.

Mark

***HerrGlock*** · 08-11-2004, 10:52

No, they actually mean total hard drive size (unformatted)

Drives have sectors, blocks, heads, and all sorts of other confusing other terms that only mean something to people with pocket protectors (unlike me.)

In order to partition a hard drive, the software must be able to talk to every block and sector within the drive.

I've not used partition magic is a couple years but it does a great job and did then.

Your drive has too many numbers for that version of PM to handle. It MAY work, but then again, it may only allow an 80 gig HDD and if you use it on your 120, then it may rewrite the boot sector so that you end up only being able to use 80 gig of your drive and you would have to repartition and reformat with something that could do it to such a large drive.

There are definite hardware cuts in drive size.

540 Meg
1.2 Gig
8 Gig
40 Gig
80 Gig
120 Gig
200 Gig

are hardware or logical cut offs in drive size, most of them are logical points where the software (BIOS usually) could only address a certain size drive.

DanH

SpecialT · 08-11-2004, 11:43

Thanks for your reply. I figured someone would know.

Now I guess I need to put more thought and research into this. I talked to my brother who has a cable modem (I only have dial-up) and he said he'd download and burn a different flavor for me so I'd have something to try until I figure out what to do.

Another thread gave an address for a site that has Knoppix and SuSE that can be run from a CD so at least I can get a taste of LINUX until then.

Mark

David_G17 · 08-11-2004, 11:52

i believe fdisk can format any size. are you trying to dual boot?

SpecialT · 08-11-2004, 12:25

Yes. I guess I should have mentioned that. I have a copy of Red Hat Fedora that I want to use and dual boot with Windows XP.

I searched a little on partitioning software and one of the online places has a download of Partition Magic for 19.99 and the description there says handles hard drives up to 160 GB.

I have seen Partiton Magic in a few places. Maybe I'll take a look at a box and see what that says.

Mark

***HerrGlock*** · 08-11-2004, 13:55

Quote:

Originally posted by David_G17
i believe fdisk can format any size. are you trying to dual boot?

fdisk can, yes. He's looking to repartition on the fly.

DanH