A: Partition Manager and Partition Magic are different programs. They are complementing each other. While Partition Magic isolates you from small details and does all work for you, Partition Manager lets you see all those details in the partition table (cylinders', heads', and sectors' numbers) and you have to make all decisions yourself. I use Partition Manager for non-standard tasks, such as creating more than one primary (bootable) FAT partitions on the disk, and use Partition Magic to resize partitions or change their cluster size.
A: While both programs allow you to have multiple Operating Systems on one hard drive they do it in the different ways. System Commander lets you boot several OS from one partition by manipulating with system files (for example you can put several versions of MS-DOS, Windows 95, and Windows NT into a single FAT partition). With System Commander you still have a limitation of four partitions per disk, but you can put many OS in each of those partitions. On the other hand Advanced Boot Manager does not manipulate inside partitions, but, instead, lets you create up to 31 bootable partitions on your disk, and then boot from them different OS. I have not tried, but it might be possible to use both at the same time.
A: Probably 31 is too much, but the current limitation of four partitions is a problem. For example, I have six partitions on my 5.1G hard disk. I have an old version of MS-DOS, Windows 95, Solaris x86, another Windows 95 partition for programs downloaded from web, some empty space to test Partition Manager, and an Extended DOS partition. When I boot from DOS or Windows 95 I can see two partitions: one, from which I have booted and an extended partition with my files and programs.
In addition, it is now common to have several OS, such as Windows 95/98, Windows NT, and various flavors of Linux in order to develop crossplatform applications.
1 DOS FAT-16 500Mb 2 DOS Extended 300Mb 3 Linux 400Mb 4 Linux swap 20Mb
A: When you install Advanced Boot Manager it automatically picks extended partition only if it is last on the disk. In your case you have to edit boot menu (press Space in the main screen) so it will look as follows:
# Part Show Name 1 1 Next MS-DOS 2 3 Next Linux 3 3 Last3 Linux (sees D:)
After that you will be able to see extanded partition from both DOS and Linux.
If you did this, but you still cannot see Extended partition, it might be that you have unused space at the end of the disk, which is considered to be the last partition. Then you have to enlarge Extended partition up to the end of the disk (just increase its size in MBR).
A: The reason, why number of choices was limited, is that I wanted to keep all occupied (by partitions) space covered in MBR. Then if somebody runs fdisk or similar utility, it wouldn't think that disk space not mentioned in MBR is empty (and available), even though it has some valuable information.
This is a reasonable behaviour, since most people want to hide primary partitions from each other and put all shared data in the Extended partition, making it visible to all of the systems, and implemented set of choices seems to be enough.
A: Click here to see what you should do before installing a new OS in the Partition Manager's help.
A: Yes you can do that. See an example in the Partition Manager's help.
A: Yes, there is a solution for this case. You have to set a "default partition" in the boot manager's options. Then, instead of booting from rememberd "last time booted" partition, boot manager will always start with the default partition highlighted.
A: Yes, there are several ways. First of all you can set the prompt timeout up to 100 seconds - this will give you some time, or you can set it 0 - this will force boot manager to wait forever, even if you had to go to China for your tea, you still couldn't miss it. (In case of compact boot manager setting default partition to Space will have similar effect). And finally, you can get a faster machine, which will solve most of the problems.
A: The old standard for partition table has an 8G limit for the size of the hard disk and partitions. Current version of the Partition Manager follows that standard and if you have 8G or greater disk it will not be able to see anything beyond 8G boundary. However, you can operate as usual under 8G line. I am now collecting information about new standard and will implement it in the next release of the program. If you already have partitions occupying space beyond 8G Partition Manager will complain, saying that their parameters are inconsistent. Don't worry about it.
A: There is a program which does one-way conversion from FAT-16 to FAT-32. You can download a copy of cvt.exe. This utility appears to be written by Microsoft, but I couldn't find any documentation or reference for it on their web site. So use it at your own risk.
A: Even if Partition Manager could do it - you still cannot have 6G FAT-16 partition. The limit for FAT-16 partition is 2G. I would suggest you to shrink FAT-32 partition down to 4G and create a 2G FAT-16 partition on the freed space.
A: First of all run SCANDISK and DEFRAG utilities. Then start Partition Manager and change partition size. Then go to the setup screen (press Enter on the partition) and change size there. Make sure that you do not go below MINIMUM partition size. Reboot computer. Done.
Note: DEFRAG moves all files to the beginning of the partition, but it leaves system and hidden files untouched. Therefore even after you run DEFRAG there still might be files at the end of partition. In this case you would have to find those files and remove system and hidden attributes, then defragment the disk again and after that restore those attributes.
A: Yes, but only if it was shrinked before. The problem is the size of the
FAT - it must be large enough to address all clusters on the disk. However,
if you don't want to backup and restore all files so much that you are willing
to spend $70, get Partition Magic and
it will do it in a few minutes. (I am going to add this feature to my program
in a month or so).
Note: you can format partitions with option /x:max_number_of_sectors
so that you can enlarge them in the future. For example if you want to extend
partition up to 4G you should put /x:8,000,000 as an option.
A: Yes, but it isn't automatic. You would have to do the following steps:
Pictures: Original: [ FAT-16 Data......... Free.... ] [ FAT-16 Data.... Free..... ] Move files: [ FAT-16 Free.................. ] [ Data.................. F. ] Format: [ FAT-32 Free.................. ] [ Data.................. F. ] Move files: [ FAT-32 Data................ F ] [ Free..................... ] Enlarge: [ FAT-32 Data................ Free........................... ] Unzip: [ FAT-32 Data............................. Free.............. ]
Descriptions:
OK. Lets go step by step.
Suppose that you have 1.2G of data on your partition.
Pictures: Original: [ FAT-32 Data... Free... Data... Free... Data... ............ ] After Defrag: [ FAT-32 Data................... Free........................ ] Shrink: [ FAT-32 Data................... F] [ FAT-16 Free............ ] Move or zip: [ FAT-32 Free.................... ] [ Data................... ] Format: [ FAT-16 Free.................... ] [ Data................... ] Move back: [ FAT-16 Data................... F] [ Free................... ] Enlarge: [ FAT-16 Data................... Free........................ ]
Descriptions:
If you have enough free space on the original partition the process will involve only one temporary partition and one copy cycle "to and back."
When you do copy use appropriate utility - one which handles long file names and hidden files.