Free partitioning program?

Bigbacon

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Jul 12, 2007
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Are there any free partition programs out there that will allow me to take my drive and repartition it without data loss or having to reformat etc?
 
Parted Magic is my recommendation, has been for a long time, and not to be confused with the commercial product Partition Magic which is for all intents and purposes long since dead and not to be used with Vista or Windows 7 at all.
 
I'm on windows XP if that matters at all.

my work machine has a 250gb HD and I want to split it into 2 parts so I can install windows 7 on the other partition.
 
I'm on windows XP if that matters at all.

my work machine has a 250gb HD and I want to split it into 2 parts so I can install windows 7 on the other partition.

Yah, you'll be fine with Parted Magic, I just make that disclaimer because the names are similar and people remember Partition Magic but most haven't heard of Parted Magic. :)

Parted Magic is a project forked from Gparted in the Linux community so it's very solid and reliable.
 
I might be wrong, but doesn't the DISKPART command included on the Windows 7 disc (used in the command prompt under System Recovery Options) support non-destructive partition resizing?


If not, gparted all the way (and always, always, always make a backup of your critical data before mucking around with your disk partitions, regardless of which tool you use).
 
Parted magic is the best out there imo I've used it many times without problem just don't mess up or else you have to start all over from scratch
 
I would used GParted from a Linux live CD (Ubuntu perhaps???) I have used it in the past and have had no real issues. But, be sure to make backups first, just in case.:)
 
Just for those that might not be aware:

Parted Magic is Gparted, in principle. The same people that helped create Gparted years ago, at least some of them, didn't like the direction that specific project was going in and decided to do things a bit different, so they broke off - or forked off in *nix terminology, I suppose - and created Parted Magic with more capabilities and other neat stuff but it's based in the same core code.

Either tool works to get the job done in the long run... I just prefer Parted Magic myself. ;)
 
+1 Parted Magic, I used it with ddrescue to recover a drive that no windows tools were able to.
 
Any free linux distro will have one built in. Just run the live edition off of a usb drive and you will have full control :)
Also, partition magic is okay. Still gparted is the best, in my opinion.
 
Any free linux distro will have one built in. Just run the live edition off of a usb drive and you will have full control :)
Also, partition magic is okay. Still gparted is the best, in my opinion.

You do realize we're mentioning Parted Magic and not Partition Magic, right? Partition Magic is the commercial product by Symantec, created by Powerquest years ago, no longer really updated or supported (last update was nearly 5 years ago), and it's almost death to your installation if you use Partition Magic on a machine with Vista or Windows 7 installed... right?

Pretty sure you do now. :D
 
Yea, Partition Magic is pretty archaic nowadays. I would advice staying away from it.
 
I used to use Parted Magic, but have been using Partition Wizard with great results.
 
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