DDS10 vs PM

I'm curious as to what liberties DDS10 takes in partitioning activities that results in Partition Magic being unable to read or modify the resulting disk afterward. The reverse is not true. I'm using DDS10.2117 and Partition Magic 8.01 (Powerquest version). It appears DDS10 does something with partition tables that alters the disk geometry such that PM only sees a "bad disk". That makes PM unworkable. A disk functions properly but PM cannot be used for any future modifications without wiping everything and starting over with PM. Anyone know any details? And does a similar situation exist with DDS10 and other partitioning utilities?

Thanks for any thoughts.
Rod

 

Rod:

Partition Magic is getting rather dated. It uses a very tight set of consistency checks based on the older DOS partitioning standards. Things have changed. Today, Vista and many of the Linux distributions will produce perfectly valid partition tables but PM will flag them as invalid.

Here is a little more discussion on that topic from last summer:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=180975

 

You might also want to consider updating to the latest build of DD (currently 2,160).

 

@k0lo,

Thanks Mark. I sort of suspected as much. However, PM has worked flawlessly for me for years and I am reluctant to abandon it as long as it works with the larger hard disks. I haven't tried it on anything larger than 80GB however, hence the interest in and purchase of DDS10.

@Mudcrab,

I tried DDS10.2160 but was unable to get it to work with Mustang's current DDS10 plugin. The 2117 build works fine with that however. I don't do any partitioning modifications in windows, prefering to always do that from a separate boot environment. Of course the Acronis Linux boot environment for DDS10 does not cut it at all on my computer, even though it is 8 years old with only basic hardware. Nothing new there I guess. I can't even get to the selection screen where I can select the safe version when I try the Acronis boot disc. DDS10 is therefore useless to me without third (Mustang) and fourth (Reatogo) party help. So I went to Mustang's plugin on Reatogo XPE to get it to function. It now works but I have to decide if I want to abandon PM and migrate to DDS10 on XPE completely or mark up the $50 as a lost cause and stay with PM, my old faithfull. For me that doesn't seem to be an easy one to make - at least not yet. I have both DDS10.2117 and PM8.01 on the Reatogo XPE disc. Vista doesn't interest me. My hardware will not support it anyway, so I'm staying with XP for the forseeable future.

 

That's unusual. Mustang's plugin for DDS10 works well for me with build 2160. Do you have an older version of the plugin perhaps? His latest are here.

Also, it seems very unusual that you don't see the menu screen when booting to the recovery version of DD. This version boots to a DOS environment to display the menu. The Linux environment only runs if you select the full version. The safe version is DOS-based and should run on almost anything. Maybe you can try making another boot disk?

 

@k0lo,

I used Mustang's plugin from the link you provided. I got it recently (12/25/07). I had emailed Mustang for assistance with the 2160 build but have not heard back - probably because I told him I was successful with the 2117 build instead. Here's my result with the 2160:

"I am using Reatogo XPE. Building the iso and burning it worked fine with no observed errors. However, when booting up from the Reatogo CD, I get a dialog titled "OSS-Reinstall.exe-Entry Point Not Found" that has the following text in it: "The procedure entry point sbAddSnapshotVolume could not be located in the dynamic link library snapapi.dll." After clicking OK at that dialog, the bootup continues successfully. Then, when clicking on the DDS10 icon to start DDS10, I get a dialog titled "Disk Director.exe - Entry Point Not Found" with the same text in it as before. DDS10 will not load."

I suppose I could try again but I am not aware of what 2160 would give me that 2117 does not. The only build update info at Acronis for 2160 over 2117 is "Vista compatible", which doesn't make it a must have for me. There may be other "bug fixes" but they are not listed by Acronis if there are any.

The complete failure to load any Acronis boot environment is on my laptop - also an 8 year old machine. It tries to load the selection screen but immediately develops a notification of "unable to run boot menu" and then tries to go automatically into the full mode, where it never loads but enters into a reboot sequence that just repeats. Pressing F11 at any time doesn't seem to do anything. I don't have a problem with any other DOS startup software on that machine so I became uninterested in continuing to mess with a troublesome Acronis product. On my desktop, the Acronis boot CD does a little better. I can get to the selection screen and use the safe mode but the full mode freezes a short time after loading. I could accept that for my desktop, work with what is basically a crippled product and use safe mode only - but that doesn't help me with my laptop where I really need access to an external disk since I also have True Image 9 on the same Acronis boot CD.

Anyway, both TI9.3854 and DDS10.2117 work fine for me on both laptop and desktop from the Reatogo XPE environment, thanks to Mustang's plugins.

 

rodnh:

I see.

I don't blame you for getting discouraged, but it is unfortunate that your hardware isn't supported better in DD because when it fully works it is one of the best partitioning packages available. I especially like being able to view and edit files in FAT, NTFS, Ext2, and Ext3 file systems while partitioning, which makes setting up multiboot systems much easier (move a partition, edit boot.ini, all from the same program). The next best, IMHO, is PartedMagic, which is running a pretty close second right now, although it has its share of annoying little bugs too.

It's hard to remember exactly what the 2160 build fixed since Acronis has not been very forthcoming with details about the changes to each new build. I think that besides making the Windows version compatible with Vista they also added the ability to partition removable devices like USB hard disks and flash drives, although I could be wrong and that capability may already be in your build.

 

Just don't ever do any more complex tasks with PartitionMagic, like changing the size of a partition on both ends simultaneously.
This software is rather dangerous to use ~.~