Free hard disk partitioning toos
Most modern operating systems contain built-in tools for creating, deleting, or resizing partitions. But many users find that third-party tools make these types of tasks easier, since such tools might not have the same limitations as a native partition management utility. Here are several good partition managers, which won’t cost you a dime.
Partition management software programs let you create, delete, shrink, expand, split, or merge partitions on your hard drives or other storage devices.
You can certainly partition a hard drive in Windows without extra software, but you won’t be able to do things like resize them or combine them without some extra help.
Safe, easy to use partition tools weren’t always available, and even when you did find something you liked, it was expensive. These days, there are plenty of completely free disk partition software programs that even the novice tinkerer will love.
Whether you’re expanding your Windows system partition, shrinking it to make room for an operating system dual-boot setup, or combining your two media partitions for those new UHD movie rips, these free disk partition tools will sure come in handy.
MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition
As its name suggests, MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition (Figure A) is a free tool for creating and managing partitions. It has a clean interface and does a nice job of providing access to the most common partition-related tasks without being overly complex.
Figure A
For example, this tool offers options for rebuilding the MBR, copying a disk, and even doing a disk surface test.
EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition
EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition (Figure B) is another free tool for creating and managing partitions. At first glance, it appears to be somewhat lightweight. Upon closer inspection, however, you’ll discover that it includes some nice features, such as a disk cloning wizard and a wizard that lets you migrate an OS to an alternate location.
Figure B
AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition
AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition (Figure C) is a free partition management tool. Its interface isn’t exactly original. In fact, I had to do a double take to see whether this application was just a reskinned version of one of the other applications discussed in this article. But the application is indeed unique. It has all the basics covered and offers lots of wizards to help with common tasks. Some of the more useful wizards include a partition recovery wizard, an NTFS to FAT32 converter, and even a tool to migrate your computer’s operating system to SSD.
Figure C
AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition is free; an upgrade to the professional edition is available for $36.
Paragon Partition Manager Free Edition (64-bit)
Paragon Partition Manager Free Edition (Figure D) is a lightweight tool for creating and managing partitions. It appears to be designed for beginners. The application contains a series of colorful tiles with options for things like creating, resizing, and deleting partitions. When you make a selection, the application launches a wizard that guides you through the tasks. These wizards are largely automated and provide few options for controlling the selected operation.
Figure D
This application might do a good job of preventing someone who doesn’t know much about partitions from making any critical mistakes, but it probably isn’t the best option for IT professionals.
Macrorit Disk Partition Expert Free
Macrorit Disk Partition Expert Free (Figure E) reminds me a lot of MiniTool Partition Wizard, but it allows for a greater variety of operations.
Figure E
Macrorit offers plenty of nice extras, including a disk defragmenter, a volume checker, and a disk surface test. It also includes some volume-level tools that allow you to do things such as explore or wipe a volume.
Active@ Partition Manager
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Active@ Partition Manager can create new partitions out of unallocated space as well as manage existing partitions, like resizing and formatting them. Simple wizards make it easy to walk through some of these tasks.
No matter what kind of file system you’re using, the free Active@ Partition Manager tool should be able to handle it, with support for all the common ones, like FAT, NTFS, HFS+, and EXT2/3/4.
Active@ Partition Manager includes other features, too, like imaging a whole drive for backup purposes, converting between MBR and GPT, creating FAT32 partitions as large as 1 TB, editing boot records, and rolling back changes by auto-backing up partition layouts.
When Active@ Partition Manager resizes a partition, you can define the custom size in either megabytes or sectors.
Active@ Partition Manager v6.0 Review & Free Download
Unfortunately, Active@ Partition Manager can’t resize locked volumes, which means it won’t let you change the size of the system volume.
Active@ Partition Manager should work just fine with Windows 10, 8, 7, Vista, and XP, as well as Windows Server 2012, 2008, and 2003.
Important: Active@ Partition Manager is also able to enlarge the system partition, but I find that it always results in a BSOD. More on this in my review… More »
GParted
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GParted runs entirely from a bootable disc or USB device, but it still has a full user interface like a regular program, so it’s not at all difficult to use.
Editing a partition’s size is easy because you can choose the exact size of the free space before and after the partition, using either a regular text box or a sliding bar to visually see the size increase or decrease.
A partition can be formatted in any one of several different file system formats, some of which include EXT2/3/4, NTFS, FAT16/32, and XFS.
Changes GParted makes to disks are queued up and then applied with one click. Because it runs outside the operating system, pending changes don’t require a reboot, which means you can get things done that much quicker.
GParted 0.30.0-1 Review & Free Download
A small but particularly annoying issue with GParted is that it doesn’t list all the available partitions on one screen like most other free disk partitioning programs. You have to open each disk separately from a drop down menu, which is actually easy to miss if you’re not sure where to look.
GParted is nearly 300 MB, which is much larger than most of the other free programs on our list, so it may take some time to download. More »
Cute Partition Manager
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Like GParted, Cute Partition Manager doesn’t run from within the OS. Instead, you must install it to a bootable device like a disc or a flash drive. This means you can use it even if you don’t have an operating system installed at all.
Cute Partition Manager can be used to change the file system of a disk and create or delete partitions. Any changes you make are queued up and can be undone because they are only applied when you save them.
Cute Partition Manager v0.9.8 Review & Free Download
Cute Partition Manager is completely text-based. This means you can’t use your mouse to select the different options—it’s all done with the keyboard. Don’t let this scare you off, though. There aren’t that many menus and so it’s not really a problem.More »
IM-Magic Partition Resizer
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IM-Magic Partition Resizer works very much like the tools mentioned above. It installs quickly and is super simple to use.
With this tool, you can move partitions, resize partitions (even the active one), copy partitions, as well as change the drive letter and label, check the partition for errors, delete and format partitions (even with a custom cluster size), convert NTFS to FAT32, hide partitions, and wipe all that data off of partitions.
All of those actions are extremely easy to find because you just have to right-click the device you want to manipulate. As you perform these actions, you’ll see the program update in real time to reflect them so that you can see how it will look when everything has been applied.
Then, when you’re happy with the results, just hit the big Apply Changes button to put everything into action. If you have to reboot for anything to take effect, IM-Magic Partition Resizer will tell you so.
You can also view the properties of any drive, to see its NT object name, GUID, file system, sector size, cluster size, partition number, physical sector number, total number of hidden sectors, and more.
IM-Magic Partition Resizer v3.5.0 Free Download
The only downfall I can see with this program is that a few of the features require that you upgrade to a paid edition. For example, you can’t make the bootable media program that they support unless you pay for it. More »
Tenorshare Partition Manager
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Like a number of the partition software tools we’ve already mentioned, Tenorshare Partition Manager has a natural feel to resizing partitions through a slider bar setting.
One thing I really like about Tenorshare Partition Manager is the interface they chose to use. The options are easily accessible from the top of the window instead of having to push through menus to find what you need like with most tools.
Several file system types can be viewed like EXT2/3/4, Reiser4/5, XFS, and JFS, but partitions can be formatted only in the NTFS or FAT32 file system.
Tenorshare Partition Manager v2.0.0.1 Review & Free Download
One thing I don’t like about Tenorshare Partition Manager that sets it apart from nearly all of the programs from above is that it can not resize the partition that Windows is installed to, very often the thing you want to use a partition management program for! More »
