Rating: 
Summary: Goofy defect and poor support unless you pay extra for it.
Review: For the most part, Partition Magic does the basic functions for which it's designed. I used it primarily to change cluster size on my NTFS file system. The scary part is that they only offer support through a form you fill out on their website and, in my experience, they don't bother to reply to that. Since it's not a real e-mail address, you don't even have a record of your original message. There is phone support if you want to pay $30 more ($95 after hours).If your interest is in their DataKeeper program (included with Partition Magic), you should know that when you use it to backup file systems other than your C drive, it will also monitor your C drive whether you want it to or not. This can slow down your system considerably if it starts backing up system files which are constantly changing. In general, Partition Magic is great if you don't run into any problems, but Data Keeper, as simple as it is, still needs work.
Rating: 
Summary: A must for serious computer users and WinXP upgrades
Review: I've used Partition Magic since version 3.0. Partition Magic 8.0 is now WinXP compatable and supports hard drives up to 160 GB and now you can move files from one partition to another regardless of partition types. This software is a phenominal program that allows hard drive repartitioning "on-the-fly" and easy booting into different operating systems. I have a PC-DOS/Win3.1 partition and a Win98SE partition on the same hard drive and a WixXP partition on a second hard drive. I have also had a Linux partition on the first drive. You can resize partitions and convert from fat 16 to fat32 and back. You can also divide one large hard drive into several drives to help organize data and files. Boot Magic (and the previous Boot Manager) are great to allow easy booting into any OS that you have on your drive. Partition Magic has never given my a problem. I have never lost data. The manual is clear, well written and easy to follow. If you want to have more than one OS on your computer or to try out a new OS or upgrade (like WinXP), then this program is a must have. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Essential piece of software
Review: This is one of the very best things I ever got for my computer. It will partition on the fly, resize, delete as well. It will quick format a large partition as FAT32 (Win2k/XP will only let you format a large drive as NTFS 'cos Microsoft want you move over to that). Copy a partition i.e. make a complete copy of one onto another place on your drive or a 2nd drive if you fit one. Wonderful. It's the only way to resize a partition with an operating system on it, FDISK etc will require you to delete the partition first and lose all the data on it. It's only problem? It can only be installed on a FAT32 partition. If your drive/partition is formatted as NTFS (XP will only format and install on a NTFS partition) you're pretty much stuffed, so it can only be installed on Windows 2000 or earlier, unless you can find some way to convert XP's NTFS to a FAT32 partition, I don't know how to do it hence I can only give it 4 stars. Otherwise, it'd be a 5.
Rating: 
Summary: Using this product ruined 2 computer setups
Review: I recently purchased Partition Magic hoping to transfer free space between 2 hard drive partitions. I had used Partition Magic 5.0 in the past, and found it to be an adequate product. I enjoyed the new Windows user interface of 8.0, which was much better than the old user interface. Unfortunately, Partition Magic failed to perform any of its appointed tasks correctly. It is designed to batch up jobs. The task I wanted it to perform was a sequence of 5 jobs. The first 2 completed successfully, but the third filed. And once one job fails, there is no rollback to get back into what was at least a working state. I eventually had to reinstall my operating system. On a new computer, I decided to give Partition Magic another try: at least the new machine had few programs installed on it, and if it screwed it up, there wouldn't be too much difficulty in reconfiguring the computer. And, of course eventually that is what had to happen. I was going to say that Partition Magic was the biggest waste of $80 I have ever spent. Fortunately for any Amazon customer, it will only be the biggest waste of $60 ever spent.
Rating:
Summary: Partition Magic 8.0 ! Great Product
Review: After reviewing all the pros and cons, I finally decided to buy this product. I wanted to optimize my Dell Inspiron 5100 with a 40gig hard drive and XP Pro.I have used this product and am very satisfied with the overall performance. You may want to use this product before you start loading too many softwares. PM 8.0 has helped me to organize my hard drive. I have had no problems and was able to perform all the operations which included resize, install another OS, create multiple partitions.
Rating:
Summary: Updated for XP
Review: I've used various versions of PartitionMagic for years. I've spent the last couple of days playing with 8.0 on a new box running under Windows XP Professional. Installation was fast and trouble free. (I'm at loss to explain why the one user couldn't install it on NTFS -- my installation is happily sitting under Program Files on my C partition.) My immediate need was to shrink the installed C partition so that I could create D, E and F partitions. These tasks were accomplished without any problems, in the same manner I had performed them on numerous FAT32 systems with previous versions. PartitionMagic is a fairly straight forward program if you have a conceptual idea of what you want to accomplish with it. It is certainly capable of causing a lot of damage, if you don't. And I have now doubt about the potential for some BIOS and hard drive combinations to produce problems, but I haven't personally experienced any. My only complaint is that the only copy of the serial number is attached to the CD sleeve. (And from the print quality, it looks like someone needs to service the label printer, at that!) Write down the serial number before proceeding.
Rating:
Summary: Should have read the reviews
Review: I purchased PartitionMagic 8 last night and installed it on my Gateway laptop running Windows XP. I tried to create a new partition using PartitionMagic. Half way through the process, it displayed a script error and restarted Windows XP. However, now Windows XP immediately shows the Blue Screen. I called Symmantec's Technical Support. They told me the problem was with Windows XP. That I needed to call Microsoft. I replied Windows XP was fine before I started using PartitionMagic. That PartitionMagic did not finish the partitioning part. I also asked if PartitionMagic had a rollback procedure in case something went wrong. The Symantec's Technical Support did not understand my question. The support person did not want to listen. She repeatedly said: "No, it is a Windows XP problem Sir. You need to call Microsoft." I WILL NOT USE PARTITION MAGIC OR ANY OF SYMANTEC PRODUCTS. AND I WILL ADVISE MY CLIENTS AND STUDENTS NOT TO DO SO AS WELL.
Rating:
Summary: PartitionMagic 8.0
Review: This has to be about the worst thing I ever did to my computer in all my cyber history. I have a dual-boot system--Mandrake Linux and Windows 2000--and I suddenly needed to expand my C drive in Win 2000 in order to install a new program. I bought PowerQuest PartitionMagic for the purpose, and then spent a frustrating night--till after 4:00 a.m., trying to get it installed and working. First off, it destroyed the first mount point for my Linux. After I got that fixed, and after several more problems, it took more than two hours to analyze and reconfigure about 6 Gb on my 28 Gb E partition. Except it didn't finish. Rather, it gave me an exception dump to the floppy with instructions to contact PowerQuest Technical support. Except PowerQuest doesn't exist any more. Symantec claims to be handling it. But Symantec wanted to charge me another $30 for technical help, on top of the $70 I just paid for the program the night before. I finally talked them out of that, on grounds I just wanted to know how to back out of the whole thing without wreaking even more damage, but the "help" they offered wasn't any help at all. I now have a partially crippled system until I can get rid of the PartitionMagic and repair the damage it did. I am filing with Symantec for a refund, and I hope never to have to deal with anything from PowerQuest/Symantec again in my life. The irony of it is that I had a copy of SystemCommander v.7, buried since about two years. Just didn't take the time to hunt for it. I have used SystemCommander successfully for years, through a progression of upgrades. It does in five minutes what PartitionMagic couldn't do in more than two hours. And it has a backup key which allows you to safely undo any problems or mistakes back to a previous condition. By contrast, PartitionMagic gives you a warning that once you hit the "Apply" button, you're stuck with it. And if anything goes wrong you have to go into the Registry to do a manual repair--with all the problems and hazards that entails. SC also handles every concievable OS, where I can't see that PQ handles more than the most common ones. And the README.TXT file for PQ lists a whole string of things it can't do even in Win 2000 and XP. My advice to anyone thinking of buying PartitionMagic ---- Don't. Buy SystemCommander instead. It doesn't have as pretty an interface, and it sometimes makes you think the process through, but it does the job with speed and safety. And the Tech people are MUCH nicer to work with.
Rating:
Summary: just get the patches and it works wonders
Review: My linux partition recently ran out of space, so I decided to resize my dos (Win XP) partition and add space to the linux partition. I got PM8.0, and at first was very distressed to find out that PM did not work, giving an Error 1513. The next morning, I called the software sales at the symantec site and asked about this error. They forwarded me to a tech line (free) who forwarded me to another tech line (not free). I talked with the guy, told him the problem, told him the link for the patch at their web site was broken (google "Error 1513 Partition Magic" to get to the symantec error listing with patches), and within a couple minutes, he sent me an updated link to the patch (for FREE). I installed the patch, and was able to resize the partitions without a hitch (no data lost). The fact that Microsoft changed file formats (giving Error 1513) is not something PM has any control over, and they have provided the patches...
Rating:
Summary: Awesome. And better yet, it even works.
Review: This product does what is otherwise impossible: shrinks a partition without disturbing the data therein.
Also it works very fast! It takes just a minute or two to shrink or expand a partition.
It has always worked for me. If you wonder why you would need this software, don't worry about it. If you need it, you know it. And when you need it, this is the only program on earth that will do this work.
When you need it and it works it is AWESOME! Here's an example:
Say you have a teaching lab with 8 computers. You want to use Power Quest Drive Image to create a clone of the hard disk on computer #1 on CD. Then every Friday night after class you can restore the image on all 8 computers and Monday morning all your computers are fresh and ready, regardless of what last week's students did. Computer #1 has a 100 GB hard drive in a single partition, but only 1GB is actually in use. The rest is free space. Since Drive Image backs up a partition at a time, you will need enough CDs to hold 100GB of compressed data, even though most of it will just be zeros. That might take you many CDs. What you need is a way to shrink the partition size down to just the 1GB in use. Conventional tools will not allow you to do this....they erase all the data in the partition if you shrink it. That kills you! That forces you to back up all the data to another hard drive, delete the partition, recreate the partition to the 1GB size, then format the partition, then reload the data from the spare hard drive, if possible, then create your Drive Image CD, and then go to through the whole process again to expand the partition back. This could take all day. With Partition Magic, you just insert a diskette and about two minutes later you are done shrinking the partition to the needed size! Snap your image CD and then fire up Partition Magic again and in another two minutes the partition is back where it started! With this technology available doing it the old way makes about as much sense as using a Radio Shack cassette tape player for data storage on your IBM-PC instead of a hard drive. The former owner of this program, Power Quest, was granted several patents on this technique. Check it out at www.uspto.gov - it's fascinating reading. Paraphrasing their words: obviously this function is not easy since it took 15 years from the introduction of the IBM-PC for someone to invent it.
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