Partition Logic is a free and lightweight partition magic alternative and Norton ghost alternative, it gives you the ability to manage and clone partitions with ease. You can boot your machine from a CD disc which Partition Logic resides on and manage your hard drive, in spite of your regular operating system type( Windows, Linux ,etc. ).

Features

• Allows to create, move, defragment, format, delete, hide/unhide, reorder, erase and resize partitions.
• Allows to copy entire partition or hard drive from one to another.
• Allows to list the information of selected partition: active status, type id, starting cylinder/hd/sector, ending cylinder/hd/sector, logic start sector, logic size.
• Supports erasing the data securely by overwriting successive passes of random data.
• Supported partition types include: FAT12, XENIX root, XENIX /usr, FAT16(small), Extended, FAT16, NTFS or HPFS, OS/2 or AIX boot, AIX data, OS/2 Boot Manager, FAT32, FAT32(LBA), FAT16(LBA), Extended(LBA), Hidden FAT12, FAT diagnostic, Hidden FAT16(small), Hidden FAT16, Hidden HPFS or NTFS, Hidden FAT32, Hidden FAT32(LBA), Hidden FAT16(LBA), JFS, Plan 9, Hidden Netware, PowerPC PReP, QNX 4.x, Ontrack R/O, Ontrack R/W or Novell, CP/M, GNU HURD or Unix SysV, VmWare, Linux RAID, MDOS, etc.
• Write basic MBR.

However, Partition Logic currently also has some limitations.

Partition Logic is a 3.5MB download available from the developer’s website.

PPM( Paragon Partition Manager ) Free Edition is a free and reliable partition manager for Windows, it allows you create, format, delete, move, resize( extend or shrink ) partitions easily, and supports a variety of hard drives.

Feature List

• Supports resizing partitions without rebooting operating system.
• It supports the following hard drives: SSD (Solid State Drive), Serial ATA (SATA), GUID Partition Table (GPT), Parallel ATA (IDE), External SATA (eSATA) HDD, SCSI HDD, All levels of SCSI, IDE and SATA RAID controllers, USB 1.x/2.0 and IEEE 1394 (FireWire) devices, PC card storage devices.
• Supports up to 2TB of hard disk size.
• File systems supported include: FAT16, FAT32, NTFS.

Cons

• You must register ( free ) to get the PRODUCT KEY and SERIAL NUMBER via email.
• You must reboot Windows after installation.

Paragon Partition Manager Free Edition supports Windows 7, Windows XP and Vista( 32-bit version only ).

Download it from CNET.

Partition Wizard is the most famous free alternative to partition magic, a few day ago I found another hidden gem which is similar to Partition Wizard, I’ve tested it on my system and it worked flawlessly and efficiently. If you think the commercial ones are overpriced, the free one is there for you.

Partition Assistant Home Edition has an tiny size and an user friendly interface, it’s easy to use, and will not actually wipe / format / resize your partitions until you press the apply button.

Feature List

• It allows you create, format, delete, merge, split, resize, move, extend, shrink, hide, unhide partitions.
• It allows you assign, remove drive letters, set one partition as active.
• It supports checking the integrity of file system.
• It supports checking whether there are bad sectors on a partition.
• It allows you wipe disk data, erase all data on a partition.
• Resize partition without rebooting.
• File systems supported: NTFS, FAT32, FAT.
• Support all hardware RAID.
• Supports the following devices: SATA, IDE, SCSI, USB disk, FireWire disk.
• Supports up to 32 disks.

Partition Assistant Home Edition works on Windows 7, Windows XP / Vista / 2000 ( 32 bit only ).

If you want to use it in 64 bit Windows, you should buy Partition Assistant Professional Edition, or use Partition Wizard( free ).

It’s a good idea to backup your system partition with free disk image software, and backup your documents with free backup and sync software before you apply your actions. If you deleted your files by mistake, you should use free data recovery software to get them back.

Download it from CNET or the developer’s website. Visit the product homepage.

Perhaps Partition Magic is the most famous partition manager software, however it’s not free. As we covered two weeks ago, Partition Wizard is a good free alternative to Partition Magic, Parted Magic is another amazing free partition manager, you can download the Parted Magic LiveCD/LiveUSB and burn it to a CD/USB drive, then boot up the computer which has no os installed from the CD/USB, then partition the hard drive!

With Parted Magic it’s a piece of cake to create new partitions, expand primary partition or extended partition, just click the ‘Partition Editor’ icon on the desktop to launch gparted and manage your partitions. It does exactly what its name implies, and don’t need installation.

Parted Magic includes lots of useful apps, such as Memtest86+, Chromium, Clonezilla, partimage, wipe, etc.

Feature List

• Supports the following file systems: FAT16 / FAT32 / NTFS / ext2 / ext3 / ext4 / hfs / hfs+ / jfs / linux-swap / reiserfs / reiser4 / xfs.
• Supports multilanguage.
• Format internal / external hard drives.
• Create / delete / resize / move / copy / expand / shrink hard drive partitions.
• Clone your hard drive, to create a full backup.
• Test hard drives for impending failure.
• Test memory for bad sectors.
• Benchmark your computer for a performance rating.
• Securely erase your entire hard drive, wiping it clean from all data.
• Gives access to non-booting systems allowing you to rescue important data.
• Runs from the CD or USB flash disk, no install required.

Parted Magic supports Mac OS X, Windows 7 / Windows XP / 2000 / 2003 / 2008 / Vista.

Download Parted Magic LiveCD 5.5 ( 136MB ) from sourceforge

Download Parted Magic LiveCD 3 ( 43MB ) from CNET.

Download Parted Magic LiveUSB 3 ( 43MB ) from CNET

Download other files from sourceforge.

Partition Wizard is a stable, powerful and easy-to-use partition magic alternative freeware, which gives you the ability to Merge, Move, Resize( Extend / shrink ), Create, Delete, Copy, Format partitions. It supports various of file systems including NTFS / FAT12 / FAT16 / FAT32 / Ext2 / Ext3. Partition Wizard works on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, supports both 32bit and 64 bit system. Further more, it now supports USB flash drive.

Another free partition magic alternative is easeus partition manager, I have used both of them, most functions of them are similar, but if you want to shrink one partition and extend another one, Partition Wizard is by far more quick than easeus partition manager!

In my experience, if you want to extend system partition, maybe it will get you confused, after you have deleted partition E:, or have shrinked partition D:, you still can not extend partition C:.

The reason is that the area of a partition is continuous, to extend partition C:, you must move partition D: forward( from left to right ) or resize partition D: by dragging the left arrow to right, then partition C: can occupy the space released by partition D:.

Feature List

• Support Windows 2000/XP/Vista/windows 7 (32 bit & 64 bit) operating system.
• Support RAID.
• Extend system partition to maximize computer performance.
• Manage the hard disk for substantial performance increase.
• Create, Delete and Format partitions with simple steps.
• Disk Copy to protect or transfer data.
• Support disk and partition size larger than 2 TB.
• Convert partition format from FAT to NTFS.
• Partition Copy: Copy the entire content of one hard disk to another.
• Copy Disk Wizard: Copy the entire hard disk to another without having to reinstall Windows.
• Disk Map – Visually demonstrate your disk/partition configuration; preview the changes before applying.
• Hide/unhide partition, set active partition, etc. – Change partition properties easily.
• Explore FAT/NTFS partition.
• Set partition as primary.
• Set partition as logical.
• Rebuild MBR.
• Disk Surface Test.
• Partition Surface Test.
• Change Partition Serial Number.
• Change Partition Type ID.
• Hot Extend Partition without reboot. NEW!

Download now for CNET.

Download Bootable CD from partitionwizard.com.

Download Partition Wizard professional, Server, Enterprise version here.