Free partition software?

**thingie2** · #1 4th Jul 2008, 16:01

Does anyone know of any good free partition manager? like partition magic, but free. As some of you may rememebr a while ago I came saying I had a problem with a hard drive thinking some of the drive was unalocated when it should be like that. So what I am thinking about trying is merging the partitions to see if i can then get the data off, unless anyone else knows of a better way to do it.

Thanks

**Daves Computer Tips** · #2 4th Jul 2008, 19:53

Give Partition Logic - http://partitionlogic.org.uk/ - a try.

**thingie2** · #3 5th Jul 2008, 01:47

I might try it, however I'll wait to see if anyone else has any ideas, as I will probably only have 1 try at this.

**serverguy** · #4 5th Jul 2008, 13:50

The only software I would trust is Partition Magic. Never heard of Partition Logic before but it looks OK.

I got my copy of Partition Magic on a CD that came with a Computer Shopper magazine, they quite regularly bundle it with the magazine. Might be worth having a look, or even on an older CD from a magazine.

**philthomas** · #5 6th Jul 2008, 04:29

Partition Logic has quite a few limitations :

LIMITATIONS
Partition logic has the following limitations:
Does not work with some SATA hard disks
No hardware support for non-USB SCSI hard disks
Supports only DOS/Windows-style MBR partition tables (used on nearly all IBM PC-compatibles). No support for Sun or BSD disk labels, or EFI/GPT tables used on Itanium and Intel Mac platforms.
Cannot format partitions as NTFS or EXT3. Can format as FAT (12/16/32), EXT2, and Linux swap.
Cannot resize FAT or EXT filesystems. Can resize NTFS (Windows XP) and Linux swap.
No hardware support for serial mice
No hardware support for PCMCIA
These limitations are intended to be fixed in future releases.

Partition Magic was always my favourite, but it hasn't been upgraded by Symantec (typical) and sadly doesn't work in Vista.

If you consider purchasing, Acronis Disk Director is excellent and works with XP & Vista just fine.

**serverguy** · #6 6th Jul 2008, 05:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by philthomas

Partition Magic was always my favourite, but it hasn't been upgraded by Symantec (typical) and sadly doesn't work in Vista.

If you consider purchasing, Acronis Disk Director is excellent and works with XP & Vista just fine.

I didn't realise that, never actually tried to use it on Vista.

Acronis is also very reputable software.

**thingie2** · #7 6th Jul 2008, 05:59

Ok, well thank you all, and it seems I don't rearly want to use Partition Logic because of all the limitations, But I may look into buying Partition magic then, or maybe Acronis, depending on prices.

**Daves Computer Tips** · #8 6th Jul 2008, 08:30

I'm a big fan of Disk Director and would have sent him down that path, but he asked for free software.

blacktea · #9 26th Nov 2008, 02:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by thingie2

Does anyone know of any good free partition manager? like partition magic, but free. As some of you may rememebr a while ago I came saying I had a problem with a hard drive thinking some of the drive was unalocated when it should be like that. So what I am thinking about trying is merging the partitions to see if i can then get the data off, unless anyone else knows of a better way to do it.

Thanks

As far as I know EASEUS Partition Manager Home is FREE for users

**Hybr!d** · #10 26th Nov 2008, 02:59

Yeah, they have a free version.

Tried it before and it is easy to use, although wouldn't resize my partition for some reason, but then no other software would either.