Ranish Partition Manager

Ranish Partition Manager is a freeware hard disk partition editor, disk cloning tool, and boot manager, that gives a high level of control for creating multi-boot systems.[1][2] It is available on the freeware live cd SystemRescueCD and the Ultimate Boot CD (not the Windows version). It runs under MS-DOS, PC DOS, DR-DOS or FreeDOS.

Features

Partitioning

Cloning

RPM can create bit-identical partition clones. (See speed.)

Speed

RPM runs instantly from any of the following:

Aside from tools that can be run from the regularly used operating system, RPM is one of the fastest ways to partition a hard disk, or to restore, clone, or move an operating system.

Limitations and workarounds

RPM has not been updated for many years. (It is unknown whether it works with a dynamic disk or a large sector drive.) It has some quirks and display problems, most of which occur when using drives that are much larger than when RPM was written:

Backup of a primary partition table and extended partition

Ranish Partition Manager can be used to create a (manual) backup of both the primary partition table and the "extended partition" (table).

Converting logical drives to primary partitions and vice versa

Using RPM it is possible to convert logical drives to primary partitions. In RPM this is done by "deleting" the logical drive, moving the beginning of the "extended partition" (type 0x0F) forward, recreating a primary "partition" in the same location as the logical drive, then saving the changes. The process is reversed to convert a primary partition to a logical drive. However, before or after these conversions the partition must deviate from a standard CHS alignment, because logical drives usually start on the second head (head 1) while primary partitions usually start at the beginning of a cylinder.

Most modern operating systems probably would not have problems reading and editing the files on a converted drive but some software used for re-sizing or imaging partitions, may decide to silently "correct" the partition by moving the beginning of the partition (perhaps to conform to a standard CHS alignment) or to conform to a 1-MiB alignment. This re-sizing would not prevent Windows XP from booting, but it might prevent Windows Vista from booting, if the starting sector is moved without updating Vista's boot files. Secondly, if the user is unaware that the partition has been moved, they may not realize that an old backup of the partition table, will be obsolete.

However, there is another possible problem with converting primary partitions into logical drives, unless the primary partitions are made for this purpose. Windows XP Disk Management is known to delete "nonstandard" extended partitions.[7] There must be at least 63 sectors before the primary partition, to allocate for an EBR, in order to make the conversion. For these reasons, it may be preferable, for any primary partition which may be converted to an extended partition, to start them on head 1, instead of at the beginning of the cylinder. The space from the beginning of this cylinder, to head 1, should be free space; the previous partition should end at the end of the last complete cylinder (or at the end of an earlier cylinder).

Starting primary partitions on head 1 (instead of head 0) has another advantage. It allows bit-identical cloning of these primary partitions, to logical drives, making completely normal (usual) logical drives. That is, the EBRs of the logical drives are at the beginning of a cylinder, the logical drive begins on the very next head, and the logical drive ends on a cylinder boundary. However this author has not tested installing or booting operating systems from primary partitions beginning on the head 1, which were not the first partition. (The first partition usually begins on head 1 because this cylinder begins with the master boot record.)

Comparison with other partition editors

Like most graphical partition editors, GParted is not sector-precise, meaning it will not show the numbers of the sectors or cylinders where partitions are being created. However, it does a few things RPM cannot: GParted can resize partitions with data on them (NTFS, FAT, etc.) and it can format NTFS partitions. Although RPM is able to format FAT partitions, Windows XP had an error on a partition formatted with RPM.

Ranish Partition Manager and GNU Parted (parted) can display all partitions in one CHS format, and both are sector precise, but parted does not show the locations of the EBRs or all the values they contain. In Linux, all this information can be displayed by using sfdisk -us -l -x but the format requires more scrutinizing and doesn't indicate errors/warnings with color, as RPM does. Unlike the command line tools parted or sfdisk, RPMs text user interface allows the user to move the cursor anywhere on the partition table to select what values to change. Parted is riskier and less efficient to use, because it saves every change as soon as it is made, and it takes time to update certain things.

RPM can create partitions manually or using a wizard.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "The Ultimate Guide to Hard Drive Partitioning". Petri IT Knowledgebase.
  2. ↑ with Ranish.html "Partition with Ranish Partition Manager" Check |url= value (help). Mosaddique.
  3. ↑ "You cannot install Windows XP successfully after you use Windows Vista or Windows PE 2.0 to create partitions on a hard disk". Microsoft Support. July 23, 2009.
  4. ↑ "Vista's New Partitioning Rules". Multibooters Dual and Multibooting with Vista. line feed character in |work= at position 14 (help) (Source is questionable. There is some confusion on this source page, which is clarified here.)
  5. ↑ "The case of the disappearing partitions". Vista Information.
  6. ↑ "The REAL Multi-boot".
  7. ↑ "The case of the disappearing partitions". Vista Information.
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