Free Partition Manager - Partition Wizard Home Edition

Partition Wizard Home Edition is freeware partition manager designed by MT Solution Ltd. The partition manager supports 32/64 bit Windows Operating System including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful yet free and easy to use partition manager to manage their hard disk. Note that the free Partition Wizard Home Edition is designated for home user only; to use Partition Wizard in a business environment Partition Wizard Professional Edition is required.

Main Features

• Support Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows7 (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.

TechSupportAlert Review:

Partition Wizard Home Edition is a very easy program to use with a solid graphical interface and the power and features to accomplish everything you need done to your disks. From the standards like resizing, creating, moving, deleting, formatting and copying disks and partitions to some fancy tasks like wiping your disks and partition recovery — Partition Wizard aims to be your one-stop software for all your disk needs.

My testing on modest hardware returned very fast results for most tasks. On the average, a disk resize including reboots clocked in at under 5 minutes. These results are very close to my results for Easeus Partition Master.  In fact, the times between Partition Wizard and Easeus were so close that the differences in completion time are not even worth mentioning.

A few notable features - The partition recovery wizard worked great. I was able to see the previous partitions created and deleted, regardless of the tool used, and recover 100% of those partitions complete with data. There is also an enhanced data protection mode that you can optionally select when you are modifying your disks and partitions. The website describes the data protection mode as insurance against corrupting your disks while a partition task is running due to power failures and other electrical disturbances.  This sounded like a great safety feature, but not one I was willing to test.  Since the overhead of using this feature was a few megabytes of disk space, this in one of those "just use it" features.

Developers’ website: http://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Direct Downloading Link (free bootable CD): http://www.partitionwizard.com/download/pwhe5.iso

This image should be burn on an empty CD, and you can use it for emergency boot-up and other operations outside of your Hard Drive.

OS: Windows 2000, Windows Vista, WinXP, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Business x64, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Enterprise x64, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Basic x64, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Home Premium x64, Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Ultimate, Windows Vista Ultimate x64.

System Requirements: x86 or compatible CPU with main frequency 500MHz, Capacity of RAM memory above 256MB.