Both products have very similar features including multiple operating system boot capabilities, and partition resize, delete and merge capabilities for a variety of partition types. For those who are not familar with these products they are actually very similar and competing products. Both claim to be excellent tools for setting up a multi-boot systems and for partitioning your hard drive. System Commander started first as one of the premier multi-boot tools, and Partition Magic's roots started out as the industries premier partitioning tool. However, recently the features of both products have overlaped thus eliminating the need to own both.

Comparing the two products we prefer System Commander (V Communications). V Communications seems to do a much better job at fixing bugs and releasing patches when compared to PowerQuest. Most notably when using Partition Magic (Powerquest) it would give us an error if we added a larger hard drive to my system then the product would support. Partition Magic will show "Disk Geometry Errors" often. It's seems that the Partition Magic product is much more sensitive to everything being correct as opposed to many other disk utilities including WinNT's own Disk Administrator, one would think this would be a good feature. However, in the case of adding a larger hard drive to a system it made their product unuseable for any hard drives in my system, even those drives smaller in size which should of been supported. System Commander on the other hand just does not recognize a hard drive if its size is beyond the products capability. Making the product still useable for the other hard drives in the system it can support. This difference alone we found as a major issue when comparing the products. An advantage to Partition Magic is there interface which is more colorful and cleaner then System Commander.

The only feature we would like to see improved with System Commander is the reporting of status when resizing partitions. The product reports messages like: Validating Partition and Preparing Data for Resize a very long time with no feedback as to how long this may take. It would be easy for one to think their system is locked up and the procedure had failed.

In summary, both products are very good at what they do. We personally prefer System Commander due to personal experience with better customer support, ability to handle any size drive, and a superior multi-boot portion of the product. Though Partition Magic does appear to be a more robust partition sizing tool and does more extensive testing of your partitions before executing. One final note is that it seems that Powerquest (Partition Magic) tends to revise the version number much more often then V-Com (System Commander) making pay upgrades necessary as opposed to free upgrades.

Obviously there are thousands of different setup configuration you could end up with. My experiences will be of particular help to those who want install WinNT in a larger parition than the NT installation program will allow and share data between multiple operating systems through a common FAT formatted partition. By following these instructions you will end up with the following:

• WinNT installation with a C Drive greater than the 4 GIG Limit the WinNT 4.0 Installation allows you to create.
• Second WinNT installation to allow you to recover a corrupted registry on your main user directory.
• Multiple other operating systems installed along with a single partition for files that all of your operating system partitions will be able to see.

Step #2 - Understand NT Install Limitations
If you have a many GIG hard drive you may desire to create a single large WinNT partition. However, we can thank Microsoft for developing an NT installation program which first formats the drive in FAT and then later in the installation converts it to NTFS. And since FAT is limited in the parition size it creates, a 4 GIG NTFS parition is the maximum you can create by simply using the NT installation program. One alternative is to parition and format this drive in another system as suggested by a Microsoft Knowledge Base article. Though a better solution we feel is to make 2 WinNT installations in the same system, which is the approach we shall discuss here. There also is an issue concerning installing WinNT on a large IDE hard disk. We recommend reading Knowledgbase article Q197667. Newer operating system such as Win2000 and WinXP appear to have solved these limitations. The following table lists the supported file systems for all of the Microsoft operating systems.

Operating System    File Systems Supported
----------------    ----------------------
MS-DOS              FAT
Windows 3.1         FAT
Windows NT          FAT, NTFS
Windows 95          FAT
Windows 95 OSR2     FAT, FAT32
Windows 98          FAT, FAT32
Windows Me          FAT, FAT32
Windows 2000        FAT, FAT32, NTFS
Windows XP          FAT, FAT32, NTFS

Step #3 - Partition Drive, Install System Commander
What we did was to first create a 2 GIG parition on this large drive with the MS-DOS FDISK program. Then leave the rest for your single large parition. Install System Commander on this 2 GIG partition. Then download any patches for the current release of System Commander you have and install those. V-Com does not appear to release new installation files for registered users thus you have to go through this two step process. Hopefully, you have Internet access prior to installing your operating systems (smile!). We choose 2 GIG here since we wanted to install an emergency copy of NT. We did not want to use this as my major FAT parition to install several other operating systems because as you will see as you read on, this parition is going to be hidden from my main WinNT partition which will follow.

Step #4 - Install WinNT for Emergencies
Now install WinNT on this 2 GIG partition leaving this paritition formatted in FAT. Really only need to just install the minimum setup since this NT installation is only going to be used to format your large NT parition which will be for everyday use and to keep as a backup system boot incase the registry goes bad on your main WinNT install. I would recommend to even go ahead and install the service packs on this install just to be on the safe side. Then label this WinNT boot as a WinNT Emergency Boot Option within System Commander.

Step #5 - Format Large Partition
When this installation is complete go into the WinNT administrator tools and format your large partition in NTFS. Thus with my 8 GIG drive we had a 2 GIG parition and a 6 GIG parition formatted in NTFS. Another weird situation we noticed is that this first format will default an allocation unit size for the NTFS parition. Reboot your system go back into the administration tools and you will now notice that if you decide to format this large partition again you can now select a lower allocation unit size. With my 8 GIG drive we was able to select a smaller allocation cluster size as opposed to what WinNT picked as a default to format the drive the first time. Thus, the solution is to go ahead and format it a 2nd time. You probably don't want to use to much lower of an allocation unit from what WinNT recommends though we have read that optimizing a bit more shouldn't hurt. WinNT appears to use the following Cluster sizes as defaults.

Drive Size               Cluster Size          Sectors
---------------------    -------------------   -------
512MB or less            512 bytes             1
513MB - 1,024MB          1,024 bytes (1KB)     2
1,025MB - 2,048MB        2,048 bytes (2KB)     4
2,049MB - 4,096MB        4,096 bytes (4KB)     8
4,097MB - 8,192MB        8,192 bytes (8KB)     16
8,193MB - 16,384MB       16,384 bytes (16KB)   32
16,385MB - 32,768MB      32,768 bytes (32KB)   64
Greater than 32,768MB    65,536 bytes (64KB)   128

Step #6 - Hide 1st Partition, Make 2nd Active
This is a tricky step. We struggled with this many hours trying to get NT installed on that 2nd partition as a Primary. System Commander documentation will tell you to go into System Commander and make this 2nd Partition the bootable one. Well since WinNT reboots the system during installs we had difficulty pulling this off. We found a much better solution to go into the System Commander Deluxe Parition Screen and Hide the 1st 2 GIG parition, and make the 2nd BIG parition your Active one. You could most likly do this in WinNT which you installed on this first drive also but we found doing it this way in System Commander much more reliable.

Step #7 - Install WinNT
Now your finally ready to do a full install of WinNT and your applications. During the install, don't format the drive again, simply choose that large parition and you will be off and running. Remember the WinNT format option in the install program will format the parition in FAT first, and you don't want to do this !!!

Step #8 - Install Additional Operating Systems
Now install additional operating systems on separate drives and if you follow this same procedure of making these prior partitions hidden you should have good success. Unfortunantly though, Microsoft doesn't really allow you to "go where you want to" (parity on Microsoft commercial) when installing their various operating systems. Microsoft makes it very difficult to install most of their operating systems on anything but the 1st parition, thus you may want to make the 1st FAT parition farily large if you desire to install many of the Microsoft variations DOS/Win31/Win95/Win98. If you are using the Deluxe version of System Commander you will notice it has an OS Wizard feature. However, this OS Wizard provides little benefit since it does not work when installing operating systems to partitions other than the 1st drive. When installing systems like OS/2 Warp and Linux on paritions other than the 1st, it will provide no benefit and infact can not be used. If your installing IBM Warp4 be sure to get the file IDEDASD.EXE, to upgrade the Warp Installation Diskettes to allow for partitions greater than 2 GIG. Linux users who are installing Redhat should take a look at the technical articles at the Netmation web site regarding Installing Linux.

Step #9 - Make Last Parition a FAT
Finally make the last parition on your system a FAT parition. Thus all operating systems: Win 3.1, Win95/98, WinNT, Linux, OS/2, etc. will be able to share files through this media format. By making it the last drive all others systems will be able to see it. Though be sure not to make it Hidden like the others. You can also use this FAT parition to install many other operating systems since it truly is the lowest common denominator.

Step #10 - Edit Partition Sizes
After using your system for a while chances are you will decide that you probably made your partitions the wrong size. Unfortunantly this is where the System Commander Product fell short in their Version 4 Release. However, in their latest product offerings this has been substantially improved making it an ideal product for this type of application.

Step #11 - Feedback
If you need additional information or support please do not contact Netmation. Write the companies who's software you bought, though we would be very much interested in updating any of this information for others to take advantage of. Please send your comments to us.