Dividing your hard drive into separate partitions can be very helpful if you can figure out how to do it safely. Mac and Linux users have had decent basic partitioning tools at their disposal for years, but Windows has never had a decent free tool to manage changes to disk structure.
Parted Magic is a Linux boot disk that addresses all of your partitioning needs, using GParted as its base, and incorporating some other excellent open-source tools like TestDisk. It supports all types of partitions (not just Linux) like NTFS, HFS, FAT32, etc. Parted Magic also has built-in networking, so you can fire up Firefox when you need to Google for advice on partitioning or data recovery.
There are a few different flavors of Parted Magic available, supporting different boot methods, like USB, PXE, CD, and HDD.
Be very careful when partitioning a disk with existing data on it. Although Parted Magic runs a complete test before the real resizing, it can still fail and corrupt some of your data. For the safest partitioning resizing on a live disk, use your OS built-in tool (i.e. Diskpart for Windows). And as always, keep regular backups of your critical data.
NOTE: Windows users interested in a GUI version that you can install and run within Windows, check out EASEUS Partition Master. Highly recommended for anyone using 32-bit Windows, but unfortunately the free version doesn't support 64-bit.
Download latest version:
Parted Magic v4.8
* Images courtesy of PartedMagic.com
| Homepage: | http://partedmagic.com/ |
| Supported OS: |    (runs on Linux) |
| Portable version: |  |
| 64-bit version: |  |
| Active project: | |
| No strings attached **: | |
** No spyware, ads, nags, registration reminders, etc.
- GParted
- EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition - 32-bit only
