I can't remember the first time I used Partition Magic but I do remember thinking there were not many tools that saved you the purchase price every time you use it. If you are the sort of person who installs multiple operating systems, resizes partitions to make room for more software, or adds and removes hard drives, Partition Magic is the tool for the job. You can run it while you do other useful things. The alternative to Partition Magic is to back up everything, wipe the hard drive, and then do a restore and hope things worked afterwards. I think I have personally purchased four or five of the eight versions over the years. Partition Magic's biggest plus for me over this time was that it has never destroyed or lost any data, even though it was doing very low-level disc operations.
So I was quite disappointed after installing version 8 to get a warning message from Vista that this application was considered unsupported and that suggested I go to the Symantec website for an update, only to discover absolutely no information about running Partition Magic on Vista. Yes, nothing--no FAQ, no knowledge base articles, nothing. Just a requirements section on the product page that fails to mention Vista. It would seem that Symantec is letting this product fade away, which is a shame.
On the somewhat brighter side, if you have a
Windows XP machine, Partition Magic 8 performs its usual magic with speed and data integrity. The remainder of this review examines Partition Magic on
Windows XP.
