Which partitioning, multiboot software?

Which partitioning software should I get. Want multi boot also. Looking at Partition Magic, acronis DiskDirector, Bootit-ng, Ranish Partition Manager. Is original Partition Magic 8.0 better than Norton's version?

 

Hello,
Partitioning - GParted.
Multi-boot - depends on what OSs you wish to install. Some come with their own boot loaders.
Mrk

 

GAG (Graphical Boot Manager in Spanish)

 

I employ disk management (Start > Run > (type) diskmgmt.msc)
and diskpart.exe for partitioning in all NT based OS's

and only employ gparted (or an old version of partition magivc) when absolitely necessary to resize or move partitions (*see "my" rules below)

boot managers are cool tools, but only if you actually need them and if you have a static physical drive configuration, otherwise if you dont intimately understand what they are doing and how they work you will come to heartbreak and frustration. Ive used System Commander (before I knew there was all sorts of great freeware) XOSL, smart boot manager, GRUB & Lilo

but recommend employing the native boot options if all the operating systems are NT\Win9X based (NT\W2K\XP\W2k3\Win9X)
Vista employs a new bootloading strategy and that would need to be addressed separately

cut and paste 101

Grub and Lilo are ideal (and under active development) for mixed Linux\NT boot options

* Advanced partition monkeying

1. backups first
2. do one thing at a time and apply (resize reboot, move reboot, ect)
3. NEVER merge partitions, resize an OS partition and copy data over if needed, or resize a data partition and copy over
4. make those recovery disks
5. Never interrupt the process because you think its going too slow

Following those rules you will come to no harm


PS boot managers often "hide" partitions that are incompatible filesystems, the complexity of their actions really should be avoided when possible, or at least fully understood if you physically reconfigure your HDDs at all

 

i mentioned GAG in this thread (last few posts on the 2nd page), and at the time it didn't support Ext3 or ReiserFS. so it would be worth checking that if you want it for linux.

GParted is very good, have alook at the screenshots and how much it supports. it doesn't support my hardware though lol, so i just use an old suse livecd for partitioning my drives.

here's a program that's fairly limited atm, but could be quite good on the future
http://partitionlogic.org.uk/about/index.html

does partition logic look like a Partition Magic clone? because there is an open source/free Partition Magic clone. i've seen it mentioned a few times in linux magazines; maybe 'linux format'. i just can't ever remember what it's called =(

 

Thanks for all the suggestions. Using 2 win2kpro hard drives on a dual boot system. Modified the boot.ini files. Hoping to get winXP Pro soon multibooting 3 OS's. I'm thinking that using software would make things easier.

 

can be easier, but generally far less resilient

the first time you start dynamically reconfiguring physical drives you quickly appreciate the advantages of having autonomous bootstrapping within a given drive selected from the BIOS bootorder, worse as systems get more complex unanticipated partition ID changes can be made by boot managers.

For a static configuration especially a complex partition strategy on 1 or 2 HDDs\arrays they can make alot of sense, but when you start dealing with a lot of individual HDDs \ arrays and or altering their physical configuration,its not that easy to keep up with what the boot manager is doing.

Of course most of that can be addressed with gigabit networking mapped drives these days, physically swapping around drives is becoming largely a thing of the past.

 

It's still hard to go past BootITNG for features, stability, support
artition management
:multiboot
;works with VM
:bundled with what is arguably (some of)the most stable imaging tools.
:good documentation for linux flavours

recent ug to V1.8 for vista
anticipated ug for the imaging tools soon.

freetrial.

multi boot options might be a problem with FDISR

You could use BootIT/IFW for partition/Imaging and FDISR as multi os tool if you are only planning one disc

A couple of really good posts from Ice.

 

From Ice's post I think my boot.ini files need some adjusting. At recovery console (using win2kpro installation CD) I can access only one drive for repair, the first on the list, with digit 1. 0 and 2 are not ascepted. Drives can be selected separately for booting. The .ini files are listed below in the order at boot selection. The first drive is ata and the second sata.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect


2nd drive in boot list (sata)

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect

Checking Ice's info for what I need to change, and 'installing the recovery console to the HDD'. Will use native boot options.

 

The first drive is ata
so when its seen as the 1st boot device by the BIOS
(assuming that you pulled this of the IDE installs %systemroot%

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="IDE" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="SATA" /fastdetect


which would mean that if the first boot device is changed in the BIOS
the second 2nd drive\install (sata) would look like this

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="SATA" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINNT="IDE" /fastdetect


when the recovery console is added to a given drive it will write its own entry into the boot.ini, but you'll need to install it twice, each time to the first boot device as selected in the BIOS (or simplify by bring the other HDD offline for the install)


the main trick here is once you have access to a working drive\install
you access the other drive's boot.ini to make changes, then select it in the BIOS to test it, if it works from there youd repeat for the first drive
that way you never get locked out and have to repair the boot.ini entries from the recovery console

its best to copy the original boot.ini's and name them bootold.ini leaving them next to the altered boot.ini in the install's root directory, in the event you do lock yourself out (of both), then you just rename them back and get prompted if you want to overwrite the broken boot.ini

 

Regarding partitioning, I have trialed BING with excelent results( partitioned active OS partition).
No good results with GParted( may be it is good with Linux but not with windows in my experience).
BING is boot manager as well but never tried for this. It has a fuly functional trial, so u can try it easily.

Have a look here as well.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=153273&highlight=BING

 

you mean a system partition altered from inside the OS?
where you booted to it as well?

Ive had no issues with gparted in Windows and find it hard to differentiate it from partition magic
Ive use both to resize and even move system partitions from outside the OS on a reboot

 

Sorry it was my mistake, corrected now. I mean OS partition.

Here are the issue I faced with GParted.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=876603&postcount=15

 

system partition
the partition that is a primary partition that is marked active, and contains the master boot record, ntldr (NT loader) and boot.ini (that also typically contains an OS that can be, but isnt necessarily (always) booted to. The boot.ini lists the number of partition with viable kernels the ntldr bootstrap loader can "boot" to)

looking through those issues
not sure why there was that icon problem
and Im not sure exactly what you mean by

a partition that your booted into (even if its the whole disk) is already "partitioned", so you could be resizing it or moving it (which has to be done after you exit the OS and after the reboot) but not partitioning or repartitioning it

 

Hi! same issue. I should have said,

Don,t forget the problem of change in booting behaviour of Windows after partitioning/ resizing by GParted.
Not experienced even a trace of such issues with BING.