Symantec Partition Magic 8 – It Still Has Some Magic

I must say that I’m a long-time fan of Partition Magic and have used it for several years. It saved my life more than one time. It was always the reference for disk management and I’ve recommended it to more people and companies than I can count. And even today, if you ask anyone for a partition management or recovery product, Partition Magic will be probably one of the tools recommended.

PowerQuest was the original creator of this great tool, and later Symantec bought it. However, after its initial release under the Symantec logo, which included a few changes, there were no more updates made to Partition Magic, and the rumor is that there are no plans to release a new version. Full disclosure: I tried to find the source for that rumor but could not, so take the information with a grain of salt.

The question is, do you think Partition Magic is in need of an update? Perhaps this review will help you decide.

What's Hot: 
When the UI was designed, it was very well thought out, to the point that even if you don’t know the first thing about disk management, finding the right tool for the job is easy. Most of the options are self-explanatory. [Screenshot 3]

What's Not: 
The age of the product is showing in the UI. It’s not "vintage" yet, but would benefit a lot from a facelift. As more tools become available with clean and more attractive interfaces, Partition Magic 8 will be seen more and more as an old timer. And that’s a bad thing, because even if we don’t think it’s that important, a modern look and feel will make a difference for a lot of newer users.

What's Hot: 
The help file does it job and has detailed step-by-step procedures for some tasks.

What's Not: 
I would prefer a more graphic help file with more screenshots and images to illustrate the scenarios described in text. That would probably save some time while trying to understand how something works and where a certain option is. Less-skilled users would appreciate it.

What's Hot: 
Setup was as easy as it comes. No reboots, no issues at all. You have the option to select what components to install, input the serial number, and that’s it. [Screenshot 2]

What's Not: 
I didn’t like the large bright orange window during installation. [Screenshot 1]

What's Hot: 

Partition Magic 8 is used by professionals and home users with or without good disk management skills. It’s been like this for years, and the reason for its success is its ease of use combined with some powerful features.

Some of my favorite features are:

• Being able to create, resize, merge and copy partitions: In fact, this is the main reason to use the program in the first place.
  
• Bootmagic: Helps you switch between OSes.
  
• DriveMapper: Very cool tool. After merging two partitions, for example, you may end up with shortcuts pointing to the wrong drive. This is where DriveMapper will come to the rescue. It searches for those shortcuts and will change them to reflect the changes.
  
• Recover Floppy: This allows you to boot from a floppy with the tools needed to recover, maintain, and change partitions. It’s a life-saving tool.
  
• Secure Erase: This is a very important tool. If you are one of those guys, like me, that uses laptops a lot and that changes laptops every couple of years, then you should know by now that it’s very important to properly erase the hard drive before you sell it to anyone, or pass it along a colleague. Formatting a partition and deleting it, and then installing a new OS, does not ensure that the data on the hard drive was deleted permanently. There are tools that can recover data even after its overwritten. If you treasure your privacy and if you don’t want those confidential documents fall in to the wrong hands, then Secure Eraser will be a tool you will learn to appreciate a lot.
  

Partition magic includes support for USB 2.0 and FireWire external drives, and can manage partitions of up to 300 GB. Converting partitions is not a problem; it can be done on FAT, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2, and EXT3. It also allows you to increase the size of an NTFS partition without having to restart the computer. That’s impressive, at least for me.

Last but not least, Partition Magic 8 includes some nice wizards that helps you with merging, resizing, converting, and other related tasks. Even a wizard to install a new OS is included. [Screenshot 4 and above] These wizards are self-explanatory, but when using them you should allways follow the instructions to the last detail. Remember, this software makes changes to your hard drive. While it does a very good job, the risk of losing data or having a major failure in the middle of a process is very real. This is common to any tool that does similar tasks. Doing a backup before performing partition changes it a good policy. Windows System Restore is not an option here.

What's Not: 
There is no Vista support and, as far as I know, no support for Windows Home Server either. Its also safe to assume that Windows Server 2008 will be a no-go. I can live with the old interface, the bright orange setup window, and other stuff. But the lack of support for newer OSes is a major issue for me and will be for a lot of users, as Vista becomes more mainstream and Windows Home Server is adopted by more families. I can only hope that Symantec listens to users' requests and updates the product with a patch or a newer version.

What's Hot: 
Partition Magic does the job well, and that’s enough for most. But not only that, it does the job quickly, in most scenarios. During my years of working with this product, I’ve gotten used to its reliability and speed. Even today, when I test other products, I still use Partition Magic as my reference.

Symantec should add support for the new operating systems: Vista 32, Vista 64, Windows Home Server, and Windows 2008 Server.

Symantec's Partition Magic 8 needs to become Partition Magic 9 or Partition Magic 2008 real soon. Otherwise it will become obsolete as more and more users adopt Vista. Yes, Microsoft has yet to solve some Vista adoption issues, and Windows XP and earlier versions are still the most widely used operating systems. This will allow Symantec to continue to live and sell under the reputation of Partition Magic 8 for a bit longer. But time is running out, and with a price tag higher than the competition, Symantec really needs to make a choice. Either stop supporting the product and state in a clear manner that there won’t be any more versions, or make an update to support the newer operating systems.

If a Vista version is released, I won’t mind the old user interface or the orange setup screen. Really! This is how good this tool is. If you are one of many out there for whom Vista is not yet in the plans, or if you work at a company, or need to support companies that have Windows XP or earlier desktops, then Partition Magic is a terrific tool that does its job very well.

In the end, however, I can’t give Partition Magic a higher score than 3 out of 5. If I had done this review last year, before Vista was released, then Partition Magic would get a 5. And believe me, I don’t give a 5 unless the product is near-perfect.