Hard Disk
Partition Managers
A variety of software tools
are available which allow
I
n a workstation or server support environment one of the most time consuming
jobs can be the process of partition resizing and/or conversion. For servers
especially, system downtime must be kept to a minimum, so a tool that will
speed up this process is to be welcomed. In the relatively early days of the PC the
support staff to non
only way to manage partitions was by use of the FDISK program as supplied with
destructively manage users'
MS DOS. Unfortunately this was (and still is) extremely limited in functionality
partition resizing for example was impossible without first destroying the existing
hard disk partitions. We take
partition(s), so necessitating the backup of any required data beforehand followed
by a full restore.
a look at what's around.
Partitions could be added using any remaining drive space but, depending on where
By Phil Morris
the space was on the hard drive, the size of the new partition might be limited or it
might have been necessary to make a few small partitions instead of the required
Technical Writer
single large one.
With the advent of commercial partition management software, such limitations are
a thing of the past and the support technician has far more flexibility in what can be
achieved in terms of partition resizing, deletion, movement, conversion of one file
system or partition type to another, merging of data between two partitions and so
on. Arguably the most well known partition manager is PartitionMagic from Pow
erQuest but others also exist, such as Partition Commander from V Communica
tions.
In this article I will list the main features of these two, plus comment on any
particular strengths or weaknesses. These two packages are also complemented by
other expanded packages (such as ServerMagic and System Commander 2000) and
the main features of these will also get a mention. I will also briefly list (but not
review) some of the other less well known partition managers.
FDISK
Despite the limitations listed above, FDISK is still the default disk partitioning
software used by many technicians. It is worth noting at this point that FDISK is
stored as a .COM file for MS DOS 3.3x and earlier, and as a .EXE file for MS DOS
4.x and later. Besides those functions available from the FDISK menu there are also
some hidden command line switches. The /MBR (MS DOS 6.x and above) switch
recreates the Master Boot Record for DOS (useful if the boot record is suspect or
damaged, but use with caution).
The /CMBR x switch (where x is a hard drive number) will recreate the MBR on a
specified hard drive. A switch of x/PRI:500 would create a Primary partition of 500
MB on drive x, while x/EXT:500 will create an Extended partition of 500 MB on drive
x. The x/LOG:200 will create a Logical partition 200 MB in size in the Extended
partition on drive x, while /PARTN will save the partition table to the file PART
SAV.FIL. The /Q switch stops the system from automatically rebooting after the use
of FDISK, while /STATUS shows the status of the hard drive(s) and /ACTOK
speeds up the partition creation by preventing the default hard drive integrity check
(this is not recommended unless it is certain that the hard drive is free of errors).
The /FPRMT switch prevents the prompt for FAT32 support from appearing (for
operating systems that support it) but it also allows drives smaller than 512 MB to
use FAT32. This should only be used with caution and definitely not from within a
DOS box (for example ,from within Windows 3.x/9x/ME) reboot the PC first to
the MS DOS prompt.
Update 154:September 2001
PC Support Advisor
File: R1173.1
page 3
Review:Software
www.pcsupportadvisor.com
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