Hard Drive Partition Software

Can anyone recommend a good hard drive partitioning software? I just got a 500GB external drive and I need to break it down into 2 partitions. Nothing fancy, just 2 drive letters. That's all.

Free would be nice

Thanks, in advance!

 

Best option is to search the forums for this. I did that, and found my answer rather quickly. There's even a mention in the "Free software" sticky in the Software category.

However, the best is Partition Magic (in my opinion). No, it's not free, it's about $70...but it's great. For free try "Gparted", but that's much more complicated. I imagine for a simple procedure you can figure it out.

 

I wasn't able to come up with much doing a search. I did come across the "Free Software" stucky, but I wasn't having much luck digging through the posts.

I don't want to pay $70 to partition a drive. That's ridiculous. I'll just leave as it is.

Thanks.

 

"gparted"

It's a free partitioning program. It's mentioned several times in this forum. Check it out.

 

Maybe you can try to find older versions 2nd hand copies of Partition Magic for sale , they should do the job just as well .

 

if all you want to do is partition a brand new drive, do it in windows

administrative tools > computer management > disk management

you only need aftermarket tools if you want to create/edit/delete partitions on a HD running windows (system partition).

don't spend $ you don't need to.

 

I either use drumfu's way. Or if I want to get fancy, or need to partition in unsupported file systems or FAT32 for larger than 40GB (I think this is the limit XP has) I use swiss knife (FREEWARE ): http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/swissknife.htm

 

Why not use Microsofts own service as drumfu stated? Works without any hitches and whatnot.

 

if it can be a shareware, go for DiskDirectorSuite from Acronis. Much better than PartitionMagic or alikes.

 

I use some of the free linux utilities to do it if there is data on the drive. If no data, then um, yeah windows does it just fine... the only reason for partition software beyond windows is resizing while keeping data intact.

 

Ok. I wasn't aware that Windows could partition an external drive. Duh, on my part. Anyhow, using Windows Disk Management was a success. Thanks for sending me in the right direction and saving me some money to boot.

 

No problem at all. MS is at least good with Disk Management.