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Hard Disk Utility Not Worth the Risk

BigDisk 1.5 folds multiple partitions onto one big C: drive, but our testing reveals potentially crippling consequences.

By Lincoln Spector, PCWorld   

The solution: Trick Windows into seeing all of your hard drive partitions as one big C: drive. That%squots the promising premise of Syncronys%squots BigDisk 1.5, but unfortunately it fumbles the execution.

With BigDisk 1.5 installed, when you write a file to a full C: drive, it%squots saved to a hidden folder on another drive or partition (a network drive or a large removable disk such as a Zip drive). Meanwhile, Windows believes the file is on C:. The problem with fooling Windows in this way comes when you install Windows programs with files that must be on the real C: drive.

As a rule, BigDisk is smart enough not to redirect these files to another location. But what happens when there%squots no room on the C: drive--something you may not even notice if you use BigDisk? The result can be disastrous. Twice when I attempted to install Microsoft Office 97 on a crammed hard disk using a shipping version of BigDisk, I crippled Windows so badly that it wouldn%squott boot.

To be fair, this only happened when I had a very small (126MB) C: partition. Still, the advantages just aren%squott worth the risks.

For the complete story, see the upcoming August issue of PC World magazine.