Partition Magic – Taming the Incredible Hulk
By Veronica Pasquale

It sat there on my dining room floor for an entire week. Every time I walked past, I could hear it rumble, and the sides of the boxes would bulge outward. Inside was the Incredible Hulk: 120-Gig hard drive, 521 Mg of RAM, a huge 17-inch flat “eye”, and the great XP operating system. I kept telling myself that anyone would be intimidated, right?

I finally got up the courage to open the three boxes, unpacked them and set the contents up on my computer desk, connected all the cables and wires, positioned the 17-inch eye so I could look at it head-on, and pressed the power button. It roared to life. Quietly. So quiet that at first I didn’t even realize it was on.

Don’t let this quiet fool you, I said to myself. Looking around at what was inside this monster revealed a lot of power and a lot of capabilities. A huge 120-Gig hard drive with all that RAM! I knew I needed to tame this monster somehow.

Partition Magic! Everyone tells me with a hard drive that big, I need to partition it to make it more manageable. Wilbur Rau said partitioning accomplishes two main things: (1) your data is separated from the C: drive (where the operating system is), so if the C: drive crashes, it won’t take your data with it; and (2) it is easier to back up data by copying the whole Data drive that you’ve partitioned off onto a removable CD. I figured now was the time to do it, before I started setting up my new computer to my own specifications. So I called our Programs Chairman, Richard D. Jones, and sure enough, he had a copy of Partition Magic 7.0 to be reviewed. Why not?

Version 7.0 says it will partition up to an 80-G hard drive. Not to worry. She took 120 G like a champ and tamed it beautifully! I only had to follow the on-screen directions, and that was relatively easy.

First, I needed to decide the sizes and number of drives I wanted. So who knows how big I need each drive? I guessed. Then when I got to another window, it asked if I wanted to make each drive a FAT, or FAT32, or NTSF, etc. Again, how the heck did I know? I didn’t even know what a FAT is! The questions bounced around inside my head like a racquet ball. Thank goodness for Wilbur. He said for my operating system, I should use FAT32 or NTFS, so I chose FAT32. Sounded OK to me.

I finally decided on the drives I need and the sizes. Partition Magic didn’t let me use the letters E: and F: because those are the CD drive and CD burner drive. But I created a drive for “FOTOS” (Wilbur’s spelling), one for DATA , and one for PROGRAMS. The last one for Programs is 51 Gigs, so if I ever want to create another drive or two, I have plenty of room. I had no problem making the drives; I only needed to select the right-hand border, click and drag it to make the size drive I wanted. I also learned that every time you change your partitions, you need to make new rescue disks (two 1.44 MB floppies). Instructions in the book are easy to follow.

Some other rules of installing Partition Magic are: (1) It must be installed on a local drive, not on a network drive; (2) it will install on Windows 95/98, Me, NT 4.0 Workstation, Windows 2000 Pro, and Windows XP, which I have on the Incredible Hulk. (By the way, I named my computer “Foxy Lady”, to make me think it’s not as bad as it seems.)

Partition Magic seemed a little cumbersome to work with after all the dust settled. For instance, when I opened a document, I would click the little open folder icon in the toolbar, and by default, up pops a screen that has “My Documents”, with subheadings “My Albums”, “My eBooks”, “My Music”, and “My Pictures”. One click to get to where Windows wants me to look for the saved document on the C: drive. Well, when you have your hard drive partitioned, you then have to click the down arrow where it lists My Documents, then scroll down to the H-drive (Data), then double click on the folder you want (TCCUG), in order to get to the file you want to open. Lots of clicking! Well, Wilbur showed me how to go directly to the Data drive. In XP, first open the Word Program, click Tools>Options>File Location>Modify>then click on the down arrow after “Look In”>and click on the folder or drive you want the documents to go to. This sets your default for saving documents, and you bypass all those “My” choices above.

Wilbur’s got all the answers to this program; I highly recommend attending his SIG (with Wayne Coryell) on the third Thursday of the month, 7:30 p.m., at Sandpiper. With his help and Partition Magic, my Foxy Lady outsmarted – and tamed – the Incredible Hulk.

Partition Magic 7.0 works with all Windows operating systems and comes with a 150-page User Guide for handy reference.