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Partition Magic takes a LOOOOOOOONG time to scan.

Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 1:52 pm
by rfg
Perviously, I had used and enjoyed UBCD version 5.1.1 and specifically the copy of Partition magic (is that the same as GParted?) contained thereon.

Last nite I downloaded and burned to a fresh CD the latest UBCD version 5.2.7 and now I'm trying to use the Partition Magic on that.

I have a reasonably ordinary (although dated) system... Gigabyte GA-M55Plus-S3G motherboard, AMD 1640B 2.6GHz CPU and just -one_ lonely old EIDE harddrive... a Seagate 80GB EIDE (ST380011A).

Well, OK, so I fired up Partition magic off the CD and then started up the partition editor.

It proceeded to do its customary "scanning for devices". Humm... well... I just looked over at that other system again and it FINALLY finished. However it ran for a LOOOOONG time... so long in fact that in the interm, I created an account here on these fora, and was preparing to report (as a bug) the fact that it was utterly choking. Apparently, that is NOT the case, but why is it now taking what appears to be sooooo much longer than it did before, just to scan the system for attached drives?


P.S. Yes, yes. I know. This obviously would not be the Right Place to report a bug in Partition Magic, even if there is/was one, but I figured that I could/should at least start here, find out what version of Partition Magic is on/in the UBCD 5.2.7 release ISO, and then I could go and find the proper place to report PM bugs.

Re: Partition Magic takes a LOOOOOOOONG time to scan.

Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2013 5:22 pm
by Explorer09
I think you mean Parted Magic instead of Partition Magic. Unfortunately Parted Magic is payware now so UBCD cannot include the latest version. You can buy the latest version of Parted Magic here.

Re: Partition Magic takes a LOOOOOOOONG time to scan.

Posted: Fri Dec 06, 2013 11:55 pm
by rfg
Ummmm... yes. My mistake. Sorry.

Anyway, I found the cause of the problem. I found in a helpful FAQ someplace the fact that scanning for devices will take a long time if the BIOS has been incorrectly set to say that there is a floppy drive present, when in fact there isn't one.

I corrected my BIOS setting and now scanning for devices is fast again. Yippeee! (I had just recently built a new machine, and I'm not bothering anymore to put floppy drives into my machines these days. I mean why bother? There seems little point in having the bloody things anymore.)