I purchased a new 2 TB enterprise class hard drive as part of a new Windows 8.1 system I am building. It is presently installed in my ancient XP Pro system so that I can copy data onto it from my old system before I install the drive into the new system. I tried to create a partition using Partition Manager 14, but the program stalled while preparing to format the drive. Trying to cancel the action failed, even after waiting an hour after clicking on Cancel. I rebooted the system and created a partition and "quick format" of the drive using Windows XP's built in disk manager. I tried moving files to and from the new partition via my file manager, deleted some, recovered them — all actions functioned normally, so the drive itself is not bad. Using Partition Manager 14 I resized the partition down to roughly 402 GB. This functioned normally and quickly, requiring me me to reboot, and completing the process upon rebooting, as expected. I then tried to create another smaller partition of 100 GB above the first partition, This failed, repeatedly, always stalling while preparing to format the new 100 GB partition. After an hour or so, and after repeatedly clicking on Cancel, I rebooted. On my last attempt, when the program got to preparing to format partition, I let the action continue for eight hours with no change to the progress message ("preparing to . . ."). I tried to cancel the operation again, again with no result other than a graying out of the cancel button. Once again, I rebooted. Do I need to do something differently, or is there a problem with my copy of Partition Manager? At this point I would Quick Format the whole drive again and start over, but I need to get Partition Manager functioning properly. Tony
Not trying to bash Paragon but my experience with the new version of Paragon HDM is very unpleasant. Before version 11, Paragon was a solid product, always finish disk operations quick and successfully. However with version 12 and 14, I met various problems such as crashing upon starting backup (Clonezilla did the same disk imaging successfully), and failed to perform partition resizing on an XP machine (error message, said operation could not be performed. While Gparted Live CD successfully completed the same operation). Yes Paragon claims tons of features and such in their new version of HDM, however in reality it's very buggy to say the least. Maybe in the next version things will be better, however as a Paragon fan, I really hope they can bring back the reliability of old Paragon.
Thanks for your reply oliverjia. I'm in the process of building a completely new system running Windows 8.1 and into which the new 2TB hard drive will go. I was hoping the problem was with Windows XP trying to work with a 2TB sized hard drive, as Windows' built in disk manager also balked at formatting the drive. Have you tried using Partition Manager 14 on your 8.1 system? What are you using as a partition program while you wait for a new version of Partition Manager?
I agree. I have found problems in all the builds and both in Windows 7 and 8.1. In the positive side, the Linux boot medium works well.
You are welcome! If you suspect the problem is with Windows XP, which is quite possible, please use the Paragon boot CD/USB to boot up the computer and then do the partitioning work. This way the program is working outside of Windows XP so hopefully you can get around any potential XP related problem. Currently I use Terabyte Bootit Baremetal on a Linux boot CD for my hard disk partitioning work. It's small and very capable little program. Alternatively you can try the free GParted Live CD which is also quite capable. For a third option, you can try the build in diskpart command line prompt when you install Windows 8.1. Good luck and please let me know if you have any further questions. Best Regards, oliverjia
