PartedMagic – Free Partition Manager Software
If you’re one of those people who likes to mess around with their computer a lot, then you have probably partitioned your hard drive many times over. If you have never partitioned a hard drive, you can do it very easily with a free tool called PartedMagic.
The program is actually a combination of two partitioning tools, taking the best of both programs and combining them into one. You can really do all kinds of stuff with this program from very advanced to very simple. Here are some of the core features:
- Create, delete, move, copy, expand, shrink hard drive partitions
- Clone your hard drive and create a full backup
- Format internal and external hard drives
- Securely erase hard drives (wipe drive)
- Allows you to access a non-booting drive, which lets you get data
- Test hard drive and memory for possible failures
- Benchmark testing for your computer
That’s a lot of stuff! The other huge feature is that it runs off a CD, so there is no installation required. You just set your computer to boot from CD and you’re good to go. You also have to download it and burn the ISO file to disc, which is really easy. Just download a copy of ImgBurn and you’re set.
http://www.imgburn.com/
PartedMagic comes with many tools and utilities, which let you do everything from managing wired and wireless networks to managing file systems in addition to partitioning and cloning hard drives.
For example, in the above screenshot, you can manage partitions with GParted. Below, you can clone a disk using Clonezilla.
It also supports a large number of filesystem formats including FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, ext4, hfs, hfs+, jfs, linux-swap and lots more.
There are too many options and tools to go over everything in a short post, but luckily the program has a lot of documentation. There is a also a help forum where you can post questions and get answers from the creator or other active users on the site.
Overall, it’s a must-have for techies, but also very handy for people who are wanting to learn more about computers and don’t mind getting their hands a little dirty. Obviously, if you want to play around, don’t do this on your primary machine as you might accidentally delete everything. Enjoy!