Customer Reviews

VCOM Partition Commander 9.0

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

version 9 is by far the easiest and fastest of the bunch. if in doubt, use the wizards. it can create, resize, and even format partitions for your swap file as well as a seperate partion to store a backup image using norton ghost utilities. for the large hard drive buffs, store all your data in one partition and keep the system partition clean and defragged often with a small section. it has been a real sweet set of tools !
thanks V-COM

Last time I used Partition Commander was version 6. Yes, I had an issue where I lost a partition, but I became well aware of the program after that.
Bought Version 9 (even after reading the reviews) because I bought a Dell laptop and for some reason Dell thinks I like a 80 GB drive all in one partition. Thinking I had nothing to lose since the laptop is so new, I bought Partition Commander 9 and installed it. I too chose NOT to use the 2 floppies, and install continued fine for me. I chose NOT to install or use System Commander because I didn't want to have that as a boot loader.

For the single purpose of breaking my one drive into 3, I rebooted the laptop and went to work in the familiar interface that I was used to in Version 6. After making the changes, exited out, rebooted and expected the worst due to the previous reviews here. XP booted with no issues and I now have 3 partitions.

This is one program that one needs to get to know first before doing anything. Just like any other partitioning program, one mistake can cost alot.

For me, I'm quite happy with my choice. It was $20 after rebates and it did just what I wanted it to do.

Used this to add unused space on my D: drive and apropriate it to my C: drive because I ran out of space to install Windows XP SP2. Took a few hours, but it worked fine. Gave it 4 stars because I only used that particular feature I and do not know if any others are faulty.

I purchased Partition Commander 9 specifically so I could add (and dual-boot) Linspire to my PC which already had Windows XP. The initial installation of the basic program was accomplished flawlessly with the setup wizard. The problem arose when I tried to use the automatic "add another OS" feature. The partitioning would seemingly progress fine for several minutes, but then I would get a message that the program encountered "an error," and it would stop. I uninstalled and reinstalled the program without difficulty, but with the same result (except the error message popped up at different times) for a total of four attempts at "add another OS." Incidentally, I chose to not make the boot disks, as this is a new computer with nothing important on it yet, so I could more easily restore it than rebuild it. So, I then decided to create the new partition manually. I am closer to "novice" than "experienced," and I did have a few false starts. However, it did come with a well-written printed manual, and I did not have too much difficulty figuring out what to do. Everything then worked out fine, and thus far I have had no problems running either operating system.

I canceled out of the setup "wizard" half-way through because I only had one floppy diskette on hand. (it wanted to make 2 boot floppies)
It did not work properly, and no partition-editing operations were ever initiated.
On reboot, I saw disk controller errors. scary.
I try to bail...
Uninstalling Partition Commander 9 did NOT revert my system to its original state.

On rebooting, I see the "NTLDR is missing" error message. (I use Win XP Pro)
This was getting very serious. FIXBOOT and FIXMBR commands from WinXP recovery console ran without complaint but the NTLDR missing problem remained. I copied NTLDR and NTDETECT.COM from my winxp CD to the C: too. But the "NTLDR missing" problem remained. My WinXP system was unbootable, even though files on the disks were viewable through WinXP recovery console and through Knoppix.

My system is now sort of OK, though in a mess, after reinstalling Windows over the existing install. (did not reformat the drive)


---- WARNING ----
Because this type of software modifies bootsector and related mysterious things of a hard disk, it has the potential to [...] up your life. So please back up in preparation for the worst. Come to think of it, most of my experience with partition resizers have been unpleasant.

That said, this is just my personal experience with it.

I've had several versions of Partition Commander, and have twice had to email for help, and my experiences differ from several expressed on this site. I have not used the multiple OS BOOT tools, and I have not used Recovery Commander, so you need to look elsewhere for reports on those.

What I have used extensively are the tools for splitting disks into several partitions, changing filing systems from FAT to NTFS, resizing partitions, changing cluster sizes, moving data onto new disks and recovering data from disks that have crashed. I am currently using PC9, and it does all that the manual says it will do. It may be that those who have had bad experiences with this have not read the manual before diving in. Any tool that reads and writes directly to the surface of the disk can be dangerous.

My experience has been uniformly positive. The most recent correspondence with technical support came when the power failed while I was enlarging a partition, and the machine would not boot when it came on again. Technical support were prompt and patient with email advice. Although the correspondence stretched over several days because I was working in a very different time zone, I do not think that any of their responses took more then 3-4 working hours. They first got me back into Windows, had me run a diagnostic programme, then had me change values directly on the disk. Despite having had the power go off mid operation, I suddenly had an entire partition reappear, complete with 11,328 files in 800+ folders. Any software that can recover this way meets with my complete approval!

Good experience from the gitgo. Product arrived rapidly from Amazon. Program did everything I wanted, and more. I am not a computer expert and the manual was a bit "above" me. The equalizer was their excellent tech support. I have talked to them at least five times finding them pleasant, knowledgable and understandable. A welcome departure from the tech support from some other companies that have outsourced their tech support to foreign countries.
I give their program and support and big plus.
JOJ

I picked up this program because I wanted to partition and format an external harddrive with FAT32 over 80GIG and XP Home would only partition a drive this size with NTFS. This looked like a good choice from reading the description on the box (next time I'll look over the reviews also). I briefly read the directions and figured I'll load it on my PC and work with the program later when I have time. I knew I was in trouble as soon as the CD started to load. It didn't ask where I wanted to load the folders or programs, it just started to load. When it came time to ask to make the 2 floppies I decided to abort the program and cancel. The program loaded anyway, and things were fine till I shutdown and went to restart the next day. I got a blank black screen. I could only boot from the CD. After much teeth gnashing I was able to get my system up and running with a backup I made earlier.
Uninstalled and never will use again.

It says make a backup of everything and they are not lying. BEWARE

I wanted to establish partitions for my new laptop to separate my OS, programs, files, etc. I wanted to do this not only to organize my hard drive, but also because my old laptop had a C:\, E:\ & F:\ I had to have the same configuration in order to migrate applications using PC Mover. The product allowed me to do this easily. The interface is very easy to understand and if I should want to dynamically change partition sizes or create a partition in the future I am confident I can do this without any problems.

To be fair, I used version 8, but I lost several YEARS worth of work after installing this piece of garbage, and I want to cry. Yes, I got a full and complete backup first, onto DVDs AND onto a separate drive, but the first DVD in the series shows a read error, and this program did something to the second hard drive (just for being in the machine) to the point that I can't even format it much less retrieve any of my data from it. This is the worst single personal computer disaster I have ever experienced, and I am no novice: I have been programming computers since the punchcard days.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.