[HELLBRINGER]

I need to create more partitions on my hard drive. Without destroying the data. Partition Magic is NOT WORKING on my system and I need a program that will work. Anyone know/have of any?

[Cynan]

PQ Magic has always worked fine for me, dunno if it will when using EFS (Encrption File System - think thats right) though. What version are you using? I have version 6.

Oh one more thing, PQ Magic can't manage Dynamic Disks, if your using them you can "downgrade" them back into basic ones via Disk Manager.

[HELLBRINGER]

Well it wont install! It use too... It makes the boot disks. Then there are no program files for the program! WTF! I SAID!

Version 5.0

No encryped data.
And I dont think I have dynamic what ever. What the hell is that anyway? I'd think I'd know if I had it on.

[Cynan]

Dynamic Disks are when you use 2Ks software RAID and all that jazz I think, I'm not too sure.

As for version 5 of PQ Magic, I'm not sure if that supports 2Ks NTFS, could try upgrading, or speak to PowerQuests technical support.

You can run version 6 inside 2K itself, very cool.

[HELLBRINGER]

ok well i dont got RAID I know that... So I dont got dynamic disks.

And I will try to get version 6

Thanks.

[Cynan]

I didn't at the time either, but when I create a partition in Disk Manager this one time, it created it as a Dynamic Disk. There was no option to chose 'basic' that I could see.

Anyway, I though what the heck, its not doing any harm. Then later on I found I couldn't access it under DOS, PQM couldn't alter it, I was left with 30 or so gigs of data that I needed to shift to reformat the thing in DOS.

Nightmare. I did it though.

Good luck with your problem.

[HELLBRINGER]

damn demo wont let me do anything! I think I'll look for a ***** hehe... I dont want to buy 6 too since I bought 5. Should get free upgrades. A-Holes.

[maxg]

PQMagic 6.01 is Win2000 NTFS compatible.
Version 5 IS NOT!!

[HELLBRINGER]

Yes I know. Took me a while though cause I just recently converted to NTFS from FAT32 for security reasons. Running PM5 and woundering why it wasnt working fooled me. Then I realized, smacked my self on the forehead. DUH! I just switched to NTFS! LOL but I am going to get PM6 now.

Thanks anyhow.

[clutch]

PM5 also supported NTFS, but Win2K is using NTFS version 5, so PM5 isn't fully compatible.

In reference to Dynamic Disks, the do tend to be the default for creating partitions from within Win2K, but they can be converted to Basic Disk mode. Dynamic Disk mode allows for software RAID use, and also allows for mounting other disks/partitions as folders onto a current partition. For example, if you have a disk with 4 partitions and the first partition is in Dynamic Disk mode, you could mound the other 3 as folders named "Partition2", "Partition3, "Partition4" (or whatever else you like). That way, there are no drive letters that would change, and you have a simple single-partition directory structure even though there are 4 partitions.

[HELLBRINGER]

Ahhh yes that seems to make sense...

But I will just get PM6 or just go back to FAT32.

[Uykucu]

You want some good advice?
Do not partition it!!! NTFS Partitions are hard enough to recover without stupid Fat32's if there is a system crash.
Especially if you are using NTFS. If you have to PM 5 it does not support NTFS 5 so get Partition Magic 6.

[HELLBRINGER]

Well... I want to go back to FAT32 cause I need Win98 to work. So...

Now how the hell do I go back?

And the reason I wanted to partition it is I want more drives with less space. So no matter what I am going to partition it.

So how do I go back to FAT32?

Hehe, sorry guys.

[Uykucu]

Backup all your data nicely to CD's or another Fat32 drive,
run Fdisk and delete all the partitions than create new ones as you wish.
There is no way of going back to Fat32 from NTFS5.

That is the way things are.

[Busby]

Partition Magic is a GREAT utility in many cases, however I have found out there are somethings it isn't so great for. One is converting NTFS to FAT32. I've tried that a few times and it seems to always go wrong. Second is handling large drives. It seems that I could resize my 32GB partition once and then every other time it would give me errors, which means I have to try to back everything up (18GB or so) and then delete the partition and then recreate one. Also when I selected NTFS for filesystem and had to use Easy Recovery Pro later on, Easy Recovery couldn't tell the filesystem on my big drive but the other two, which were done by Win2k setup and Win2k format, were detected nicely.

[HELLBRINGER]

Well it worked! NTFS to FAT32 with PM6. Worked fine.

40GB Drive, quite large and it worked fine.

ALthough I have seen things go wrong with PM.

[Uykucu]

If you think you have problems with 32 GB's try mine.
4x 75 GB with only about 20 free.
I did not wanna get back to Fat32 (Who would) but bloddy stupid PM messed everything up...
This is why I am against it.

[HELLBRINGER]

I understand. I once had PM phuk everything up and I was pissed off at it my self. But there is no other program with this much power.

Best thing to do is backup everything completely before you do any outside conversions without using Windows built-in converting system.

Even that could screw up I can imagine.

I'm not sure how but going from NTFS back to FAT32 worked fine and everything is great now. I am satisfied.