Looking for Free Partition Manager

YSbird

YSbird

Distinguished Member
Can anyone recommend a good free partition manager?

A friend needs the D drive on her Toshiba laptop (running Vista Home Premium) to be expanded. Toshiba only gave her approx. 7Gb of space on D and all the rest to C.

I've searched the 'net and found a few, but not really sure just how reliable they are or if they will work on Vista.

I already have an older version of Partition Magic 8 Pro, but highly doubt that it will work on Vista. And really don't want to try it out on a pc that isn't mine. I also don't want to buy one since it will probably be used only once.
 
The only good free partition manager I'd recommend is GParted, but you must burn it to a CD and boot into it - it doesn't install to Windows.

If you want a paid product that is Vista compatible, go with Acronis Disk Director 10.
 
Thx, I'll check it out, saw that one while searching, but thought it was only for Linux. I'll read more carefully this time round.
 
GParted can only be run from within Linux, but you can boot into it via a GParted Live CD if you have Windows.
 
Oh the frustrations!!!

Okay, downloaded the GParted iso file, burned it to CD.

Rebooted pc and it ran through a bunch of stuff, but then couldn't figure out what to do next.

Tried to find some simple (or any kind of understandable inst) on the net, but no luck.

Seems those who wrote any kind of instructions assume that everyone knows what to do so don't include much info.

I'm lost as to what to do once you reboot pc and start GParted.

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I just couldn't find anything useable for inst on the net.

Addendum:

Further to above and should have mentioned before.

When Gparted first comes up, it gives you 6 choices. So far I've tried 3 with the same end result.

At the Package Screen it provides 4 choices, tried 2 and clicked ok, 3rd time selected cancel

All choices end up with same result, I get a message floating across the screen saying "Sync. out of range".

Going back to try one last time and try another choice on the first screen.
 
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The Sync out of range means that it cant get your resolution. Being a LiveCD it cant hit much higher than 1280x1024. You best bet is to try the Old Config System setup.
 
My resolution is lower than 1280 X 1024, it is 1152 x 864

BTW, haven't used Gparted on friends pc yet, thought I'd try it out on mine first to see how it worked. Also needed to change partition sizes anyway after setting up dual boot.

What I'm wondering right now is....

Firstly I'm not using a newer slim monitor, I'm still using my old trusty Samsung SyncMaster 750S, which works like a charm. Could that be part of the problem?

or should I change my resolution to something lower like 1024 x 768, or 800 x 600

BTW the ISO file I'm using is

[FONT=&quot]gparted-live-0.3.9-4.iso[/FONT]
 
Try version 0.3.3 for reference. That was the last known one to not be specifically tied to Linux.

SourceForge.net: Files

If you notice the platform dependencies. For version 0.3.3 it is independent. Which might hlep your system more.
 
THX I'll check it out and give it a try. Just hate the thought of wasting a perfectly good CD to burn the previous one. The Gparted site is seriously lacking in information (or way behind in their documentation) to help people who are unfamiliar with Gparted, and especially for ones not using Linux.
 
Its not wasted per say. Just save it since it is a newer copy and you might need it on another PC.
 
If GParted is giving you trouble, give Acronis Disk Director a try. Link to trial is in my first post in this thread.
 
Free Partition Manager Vista

Oooooops, this is an old post. :| However, I still like to recommend the free partition manager EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition. I am a loyal fan of this magic partition software and keep it as my only partition software installed instead of old partition magic.

This freeware works with windows vista. You can learn more info here: http://www.partition-tool.com
 
Yeah it is, sorry about that. Its just they make some of thier other tools available on their main site (like disk copy) so thought it was bad...
 
Hi,

The Easeus app. the previous poster linked to only works on 32 bit o/s.

I use the Paragon Hard Disk Manager ( excellent, but not free ).

Out of curiosity, I tried Partition Wizard - the free version works well on my Vista and 7 64 bit installs - not as full featured as the Paragon , but very good for a freebie.

It only handles FAT and NTFS

Partition Wizard is a Windows based FREE Partition Manager. It works as partition magic and supports Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008 server and Windows 7. FREE for Home and Business user.


 
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I've used multiple generations of Paragon software in many guises, currently Drive Copy 9.0SE which is Vista 64 bit compatible. I've always got them as magazine freebies.
I've never had any trouble with any of them (I even pre-formatted my Vista x64 drive partitions with an old ME- era version on a bootable floppy)
The only thing that puzzles me about them is that, whether you use Partition Manager, Drive Backup, Drive Copy or any other name Paragon software comes in, they all look alike, work the same way and do the same job. I'm not quite sure why they have so many flavours ?
 
Same with Acronis TrueImage and Disk Director.

I currently work full-time at a backup software company, and I think I understand why:

I was given the task of developing a cluster-based file-backup library. I constantly ran into obstacles and limitations of the available Windows API, and as I mentioned before, I ended up writing my own partition manager that did everything from scratch.

The same tools and techniques are required for low-level backup as are needed for managing partitions, etc. When a company invests that much time, money, and effort into a library that does so much, it always seems like such a waste to sell it only as that single product it was originally intended for.... so they package it into multiple products, each with a different "focal point" but at the end of the day, the same tasks & functionalities because it's all built around the same core technology.
 
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