Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Free Partition Tools

Windows, and Linux:

Changing the partition sizes can be a pain, especially if you don't want to lose the data on the drive. You could buy something like partition magic, but I recently came across two alternatives that work just as good or better and are FREE. Both can change partitions sizes without needing to format or loose any data that is on the existing partitions.

Gparted:
Gparted is both free and open source (those two things are not always the same). It's part of the Linux GNOME protect. So if your into Linux this is a great tool for you, and if your into Windows it's also a great tool for you too! You see it supports NTFS, FAT, and FAT32 (Standard windows file systems). You don't even have to be a Linux guru, just use GParted Live. GParted Live can be booted from a CD, USB, or even PXE. You boot up the system and walk through a few easy steps and your done! I have used this twice already and its really great! It has a nice GUI and seems to work really well.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/index.php
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php


EASEUS Partition Manager:
This is a Windows only tool I recently came across on Life Hacker (A really great Blog). I haven't used it yet but it installs into Windows and looks very easy to use. It's free for personal use, but not business. It does have a very reasonable unlimited licenses for businesses though and that version supports Windows2003.

http://www.partition-tool.com/

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