Main window of PartitionMagic 8.05
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Stable release |
8.05 (Build 1371) / May 5, 2004
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Development status | Discontinued |
Operating system | DOS, Microsoft Windows (Must use a bootable disc for Vista and later), WinPE |
Type | Partition editor |
License | Proprietary |
Website | www |
PartitionMagic is a computer program for hard disk drive partitioning originally made by the PowerQuest corporation, but now owned by Symantec. As of December 8, 2009, the Symantec website stated that they no longer offer Partition Magic. The program runs on Microsoft Windows operating systems including Windows 2000 and Windows XP, but the application is incompatible with Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 or 10 and must use a bootable disk for partitioning drives instead. The utility can also be run from a bootable CD-ROM and enables creation and modification of partitions. Existing partitions can be resized without loss of data.
PartitionMagic is capable of resizing NTFS, FAT16 or FAT32 partitions without data loss, and can copy and move partitions, including to other disks. It also has various other features, including being able to convert between FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS, modify the cluster size of FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS filesystems, and merge adjacent FAT or NTFS filesystems (all without data loss, though some NTFS-only metadata is lost on conversion to FAT). Additionally, it had somewhat limited support for ext2 and ext3 partitions. PartitionMagic was the first commercial product of its kind containing patented technology.
The first version of PartitionMagic was released with DOS and OS/2 support. Versions 2–3 were offered with DOS, OS/2 and Windows support. Symantec's PartitionMagic version 8 dropped the OS/2 version. Server versions were also offered under the name Server Magic for Windows and Novell NetWare servers.
The stable version of PartitionMagic 8.05 also included a rescue floppy disk with an additional DOS version of PartitionMagic. The DOS version (which included DR-DOS or MS-DOS) came on one 2.88 MB or two 1.44 MB floppy disks.