£20 Worthwild for a Program you Use Once? Well probobly (Powerquest Partition Magic 6.0)

Member Name: Meshek

Product:	Powerquest Partition Magic 6.0
Date:	22/01/02 (480 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Resize Partitions Without Data Lose, Merge Partitions Without Data Lose, Create New Partitions Easily

Disadvantages: Many things it does can be done when installing windows., Pricy for a ultility one uses once or maybe twice., Not easy to use for computer amateurs.

Partition magic is a partitioning utility from a company called powerquest. The version I am reviewing here is version 6 although version 7 has come out. There is not much difference between these other than the price, £20 as opposed to £40, unless you have windows xp in which case I would definately recommend version 7 as version 6 has many compatability issues with it.

This program lets you do almost anything you like where concerned with changing partitions. You can resize partitions, create new partions and merge partions all without having to format your hard disk and hence losing all the data on it. Most of these features can be done by windows while installing but you lose the contents of you hard disk.

This may not sound very useful but there are certain applications where it is very useful to change partitions. 1. It is allways a good idea to keep windows on a seperate partition from all your data that way you can reinitialise the windows part of the hard disk without losing your data. 2. It can make your computer much faster by putting your swap file (virtual memory) on a seperate partion. This means that it will be much less defragmented if at all and hence much faster. 3. Seperate partitions for different people. This makes data easier to keep track of and reduces the block size on the disk. (Hence less wasted space by half filled blocks).

This is a great program if you feel you need or want to partition your hard drive, which I would highly recommend as your can make your computer faster and more efficient, however this is not a good program for the amateur computer user and may not be worth £20 for some people.

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