Advice on using Partition Magic

Notice: As Symantec no longer offers Partition Magic, we advice you to use other free partition software available in this industry instead.

Home users running Windows 7, Vista, XP, 2000 may try freeware Partition Wizard Home Edition or Easeus Partiiton Master Home Edition. They are both freeware for resizing partitions.

Windows Server users may have to try shareware since there is no freeware on the market for server partition resizing. We recommend you to try Partition Wizard Server Edition or Easeus Partition Master Server Edition.

If you already have one copy of Partition Magic and want to know how to use it to manage partitions, we have a tutorial here: resize partition with Partition Magic

What can Partition Magic do?

The main functions of PartitionMagic from its official site http://www.symantec.com/norton/partitionmagic.

Key Features

  • Partitions hard drive
  • Create, resize, merge, split, copy partitions
  • Run multiple operating systems

More Features

  • Divides hard drive into two or more partitions
  • Runs multiple operating systems on the same PC
  • BootMagic™ makes it easy to switch between operating systems
  • Copy, move, resize, split, or merge partitions
  • Guides you through the partitioning process
  • Easy to find, copy and paste files in both Windows® and Linux® partitions
  • Create and modify partitions up to 300GB*
  • Supports USB 2.0, USB 1.1, and FireWire® external drives**
  • Supports and converts partitions among FAT, FAT32, NTFS, Ext2, and Ext3 file systems
  • Enlarge an NTFS partition without restarting computer
  • Resizes NTFS system clusters to the most effective size

What Partition Magic cannot do?

  • it has somewhat limited support for ext2 and ext3 partitions.(to manage ext2/ext3 partitions, Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 could do the job)
  • it is not compatible with Windows NT, 2000, or 2003 server editions (to manager server partitions, Acronis Disk Director Server 10.0 could do the job)
  • it does not support Windows Vista.( Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 , Paragon Partition Manager Personal Edition, could do the job.)
  • Be aware that Parition Magic does support Windows XP, however it may not support well on XP sp2 or XP sp3, since the XP sp2/sp3 were later released and Symantec did not offer any update to Partition Magic. (In this occasion, if you insist on install Partition Magic, then we do remind you to back up your disk in advance.)

Will Symantec offer upgrade on Partition Magic in the future?

PartitionMagic, while under PowerQuest, was updated regularly, adding new and useful features. Since Symantec purchased the application in 2003, there has not been a new release, and Symantec has stated that it has no plans on releasing a new version. So there probably will be no Partition Magic 9.0 or Partition Magic 10.0. So many years passed, many people are still stick to Partition Magic, and according to Google Tool reports that there are still around 2000 times searches of “Partition Magic 9.0” every month. We can see people are expecting new versions of Partition Magic.

History of Partition Magic

Ownership history of Partition Magic: According to Wikipedia, PartitionMagic is a hard disk partitioning software originally made by PowerQuest in 1997, but now owned by Symantec since the acquirement in 2003.

Release history of Partition Magic:

  • 1997--PartitionMagic 3.0 released under Powerquest.(The original version of PartitionMagic)
  • 1999-- PartitionMagic 4.0 released under Powerquest.
  • Apr.2000-- PartitionMagic 5.0 released under Powerquest.
  • Dec.2000-- PartitionMagic 6.0 released under Powerquest.
  • 2001-- PartitionMagic 7.0 released under Powerquest.
  • 2002-- PartitionMagic 8.0 released under Powerquest.
  • December 5, 2003—Symantec acquired Powerquest.
  • May 5, 2004-- PartitionMagic 8.0.5 released under Symantec.(no more release from then on.)

Why Partition Magic became so popular?

When Partition Magic was first released in 1997, there was mainly the DOS world. For years, power users have understood the secret of mastering hard drives--hard disk partitioning. Dividing a hard drive into several partitions lets you efficiently organize operating systems, programs, and data. Until PowerQuest's PartitionMagic came along, modifying partitions was a nightmarish task demanding that you back up your data, delete existing partitions, create and format new partitions, re-install the operating system and finally, restore the data (which hopefully wasn't destroyed along the way). If you wanted to modify your configuration, you had to repeat the entire, day-long process. With PowerQuest's PartitionMagic 3.0, optimizing a hard drive without destroying data became as easy as clicking your mouse. Even the novice computer users can visually create, format, shrink, expand and move hard disk partitions in minutes. Besides it was the first advanced partition management tool better than “Disk Management”. That’s why PartitionMagic soon take the disk partitioning world.

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