Free alternative to PartitionMagic?
Submitted by jspencel on May 3, 2008 - 13:39.
Hey all,
I deleted some partitions a while ago and want to resize some of my primary partitions but windows will not allow me to do this in its borderline useless disk partition manager.
Are there any freeware systems like PartitionMagic that I can use? I don't want to pay 70 bucks for something I plan to use once, and I hate pirating software that jerks around with my hardware.
Thanks in advance,
- J
»
- Login to post comments
Linux-ish option?
You could run a Linux live disk, and use "gparted". It's probably a lot safer than any other options for Windows.
___________
Josh Gaber
That's dangerous! In the butt!
ahh, true...i hadn't thought
ahh, true...i hadn't thought of that.
Thanks, Josh!
---------
Jon "slyfox" Spenceley
4th year Big Jerk
Treasonous Teeter-Tottering Traitor
BUTTS LOL
I recently used the Gparted
I recently used the Gparted live cd to move / resize NTFS partitions on two Vista boxes. Worked like a charm! It's great if you want to only download a small image, or boot off of a USB key.
--
Andrew
Another link and a story
As long as we're tossing awesome compact linux distros into the ring, the Linux System Rescue CD was a lifesaver for me when I second tried to install Linux. It's fairly small (~200 MB), easily USB-bootable, and quite feature-rich. Boots into command line, but has a GUI available. It even has a web browser! Anyway, now I'll tell the story of my second time trying to install Linux. (The first was also a comical tale, but it is for another time...)
I set up an elaborate list of partitions in Ubuntu Alternate's installation program and dual booted with windows - every bit of my 107 GB drive was being used. I logged in and everything was working well and I was happy. About an hour later I decided to go back into Windows XP (for some reason), but Windows didn't boot. OS Not found.
So after checking some reasonable things (BIOS and such) I went to a different box and, searching for answers, happened across the Linux System Rescue CD, which I burned, and tried. I'm not sure how or why I felt that playing with the sizes and locations of partitions would solve my problem, but I just expected it to.
After days of trial and error using gparted, I found that having a partition within the last ~5GB of my 107 GB drive (swap or any other kind) caused Windows to be unable to read the MBR. I could boot into the SysRescCD and move a partition into that space, and stop Windows from booting, then head back into the SysRescCD and move it back, and Windows would function again. Ubuntu was happy the whole time.
It probably made sense to someone; damned if it made any to me.
---
Wyatt Carss
Honours Bachelor of Computing, Co-op
Senator, Bachelor of Computing
President, SOCIS
x54272
The GParted liveCD worked
The GParted liveCD worked like a charm. Took me a bit to get used to the interface, but now that I have it kicking around, I'm sure I'll use it again.
Freed up tonnes of space on my old HD...i had a few linux partitions kicking around that I didn't use since I got Cygwin running the way I wanted it to, and thus I had 30 gigs sitting uselessly. now I've got 80 gigs of downloadable crap space!
---------
Jon "slyfox" Spenceley
4th year Big Jerk
Treasonous Teeter-Tottering Traitor
BUTTS LOL