Partition Magic -backup needed?

[mikevs]

Any one used Partition Magic and found in crashed your HD. In other words, do I need to do a HD back up?

[GeoffreyN]

I've used PM for a couple of years and have never had a crash or any other ill effect. I've used it to create new partitions, change the size of partitions on the fly, change them back, move them around, just about anything you can think of. All the same, it could be a good idea to back up your important files before you use it for the first time just in case.

[Derango]

You don't need a backup. However, any time your going to be messing with a low level system type thing like partition tables, you should have a backup. Partition Magic is a nice piece of software that does alot to minimize the risk. Unfortunetly, that risk can't be minimized to zero. Always back up...just in case.

[trekker]

I have got a couple of bad experiences with Partition Magic 5. To date, I have lost 2 partitions, and it screwed up my laptop such that it cannot boot up from boot disks. Read my post at http://www.linuxnewbie.org/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=014631

I would STRONGLY recommend backing up your data. It's not worth the risk.

But still, I think Partition Magic's a pretty good tool. Just take the neccessary precautions.

[demian]

Finally I can bother someone with this anecdode :):

I do a lot of messing around with partition tables cause I've like four distros installed on my system, at least two of which are ever changing. There are about 30 partitions on my harddisks and I've gotten into the habit that whenever I changed the partition table I write down all the information I need to recover it. This includes partition number, size (in cylinders, sectors (+offset)),... just everything. So I always had this printed table and never needed it.
I do backups, of course, but often I wait till I have enough data to fill an entire CD so there are times when I have quite a lot of stuff that's saved nowhere but on the harddrive.
Ok, my point is that last week I installed a new distro and the installer screwed up the partition table of my /dev/sdc where I had some partitions of my (main) debian system lying around. I booted into a rescue system and entered the data I had on my printed partition table and thus recovered everything. This saved me hours and hours of work and though it's a pain sometimes to take the neccessary steps to be able to recover from disasters the thing to remember is: If you have valuable data on your harddrive be always prepared for the worst thing to happen at any time.