Customer Reviews

Partition Commander 10

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

The following review pertains to running Partition Commander on Windows XP. I haven't attempted to run it on Vista, and my criticism may not apply there. However, most businesses are still running Windows XP, so I think it's important to note that there is a superior product for that platform.

I am giving this product one star, because, on Windows XP, it still doesn't have a major feature which PartitionMagic had five years ago. That is the ability to browse and copy files from an NTFS partition over USB.

Why is this important? One of the main uses of partitioning tools is to try to fix a partition which has become non-bootable. When that happens, you will also want to copy your files off of the disk, before attempting to repair the MBR and maybe also the Windows XP installation. Unfortunately, Windows XP does not permit accessing an NTFS partition over USB. There are a number of software applications which can do this, and PartitionMagic is one of them. It will install a driver which will give you the capability, either in PartitionMagic, or via Windows Explorer, to view and copy your files from the external NTFS partition over USB.

I was also disappointed with Partition Commander, because when you attempt to do boot corrections, the generated report is useless. It just reports "Success", without telling you whether the correction changed anything or not. I believe that PartitionMagic also has a more extensive capability for recovering non-booting partitions.

If you are running Windows XP, I strongly recommend PartitionMagic over Partition Commander. It's too bad Symantec killed it (no version forthcoming for Vista). It was a fantastic product.

I've used Partition Commander happily for several years. I upgraded to Version 10 so I could get support for the new format Vista partitions.

Despite the picture of a Vista Partition on the box, the in-box CDROM doesn't support Vista partitions. However Avanquest provides a free download upgrade (to version 10.1) which adds Vista support. This 71 Meg download includes an ISO CDROM image so you can burn a new bootable CDROM for Vista. Happiness.

I successfully updated several partitions, including shrinking a Vista boot partition which Vista itself had declared non-shrinkable. Things mostly went OK, but I did have to use my Windows Vista installation disk to repair the boot path for Vista - somehow Partition Commander hadn't left the boot path quite right.

Compared with earlier versions, Version 10 has a substantially improved user interface, which displays more information on each screen. For example I found it much easier to identify and select partitions and there was better progress feedback as operations proceeded.

Updating partitions isn't something to do casually. But if you decide you want to do it, Partition Commander makes it pretty straightforward, whether for growing, shrinking, moving, or changing attributes.

Add me to the list of satisfied customers. I first tried "Disk Director" by Acronis. It ran for a while, displayed lots of messages (and no errors). But my disk drive stayed the same. So I got Partition Commander, and I am happy to say that the resizing worked. More importantly, everything still worked afterwards.

Be warned though, that you might need LOTS of time for this process to complete. When you first run the app, it might take a LONG time to load up. I could see the launcher.exe running in the task manager, so I knew it was loading, but it took a while to actually render. And then after I clicked "restart" to apply the changes, it also seemed like nothing was happening for a long time. Resist the temptation to start hitting keys! Just wait, and it will happen. It took 10-12 hrs for it to move 15GB from my D drive to my C drive. So start up the process in the evening, and give it overnight to run.

I recently ran the defrag program that is part of Partition Commander 10.1. Rather than moving the files, it made the partition inaccessible. I booted up using the Partition Commander recovery disc, but the partition showed as unformatted. I have a Dell laptop and run Vista (pre-Sp1).

Searching the company's website didn't uncover any helpful info.
In a prior job, I rebuilt PCs and repaired laptops. I can usually retrieve some data from machines that haven't sustained physical damage. I ran one of my favorite programs called Zero Assumption Recovery. It was able to recover 7% of the files on the partition. In the end, I reformatted the partition and reinstalled all my programs.

I have been a long time user of System Commander (another product from Avanquest/V-Com). It works better than Partition Commander, but also has some unpleasant "quirks".

I like the features of these products. When they work, they are very helpful. When these programs don't work, they may cause you hours of misery.

I purchased Avanquest Partition Commander and it did not do what I needed. It also stated to send an email to get the upgrade to support Vista. I sent an email and never received anything back.

The software states it has a money back guarantee. I sent the software back and have called them and emailed them to get a status on my refund. I have not been able to get a response via email. When I call it states they are in training or that they are closed and to call back during business hours. The reality is I am calling during their business hours. It doesn't matter what number or who you try to get to.

The Company is one BIG BLACK HOLE. Would not recommend purchasing any software from Avanquest. If you have problems, you are on your own.

The original way of making partitions meant that it must be done before any information is put on the hard drive because the process will destroy whatever is on that hard drive. Using Partition Commander means that partitions can be made with any information still on the hard drive and no destruction of data.

I liked using Partition Commander. Making the partitions was easy to do. I say easy if you have some experience in partitioning and know what you want to accomplish. The best thing I like is that if you make a partition and it doesn't work out the way you expected it is so easy to fix it. For right now I only needed to make one partition but if I felt I needed more of them I could make them with ease.

Actually, someone with no experience could probably use this product by following the instructions, but knowing why partitioning is useful and what can be accomplished is important knowledge before partitioning.

I've had no major problems with this software on Windows XP with a 250 GB SATA drive and two external IDE drives connected to USB ports. There is an erroneous statement in the manual, to the effect that Partition Commander 10 will not work with a RAID 5 disk. That's true only of earlier versions. The tech support staff promptly responded to my query about that. They were pretty good about helping me troubleshoot another problem, which turned out to be unrelated to the program. I give it only 4 stars because I haven't used enough of its features yet to give it an unqualified thumbs up.

V Communication's Partition Commander 10 is a must have for everyone that wants to practically guarantee data safety on a hard drive. It can make partitions with the FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS file systems. It can resize, format, make, and delete hard drive partitions right while Windows is running. It can also make recovery CD's for your operating system, in case it gets wrecked. It works with every version of Windows from 95 up to XP!

The amazing feature is the "Undelete Partitions" feature. I lost a partition with 14.2 GB of data on it. I thought all hope of data recovery was gone. Then, I found out about Partition Commander 10. I bought a copy of it, and used the "Undelete" feature, and I have every crumb of data back (Whew, because my essays were on that partition!). I did have to reinstall my operating system (because I hadn't made a recovery disc). But you don't have to if you set up a recovery disc now.

So buy a copy of this software while everything's alright, and you won't regret it when it's not.

I liked version 8 of Partition Commander and used the CD to partition numerous hard drives. Today at a client, my trusty version 8 CD wouldn't boot on a new HP Workstation, so I purchased the new version 10 of Partition Commander at a local Office Depot. Sad to say, after going through the rigamarole of installing the software (and activating it which required setting up an Internet connection) and creating the Recovery CD (because the new install CD doesn't double as a proper boot CD), the Recovery CD failed to boot the system. I tried a couple of other blank CD's--no luck; I also tried creating the three boot floppies and booted on an external USB floppy drive (the new Workstation didn't come with its own floppy drive)--it booted and went into the program and I selected move/resize to reduce drive C to 70 GB from 140 GB (I was going to create a separate additonal drive paratition); but the program crapped out with an error message. Perhaps the HP Workstation is rigged so that one cannot partition the drive, but that seems rather incredible. Anyway I'm sorely disappointed with the new version. I'm going to test the Recovery CD on other computers, but the CD drive on the HP Workstation works--after all, it installed the program.

It just works. Nice, easy to use GUI interface, easy to follow instructions, and no problem using. Download for the Vista - ready version is a completely new Partition Commander (Version 10.5).
This product works where Partition Magic won't, and it has more features. Use caution when using in a Windows domain environment, however, as GPO's and software restrictions policies can affect its performance.