Partition management software. Quick outline
Some disks and partition management software (like Partition Commander and Partition Magic) are not prepared to work with disks (or partitions) format introduced in Windows Vista. And it will simply broken your disk, sometimes in the way, that even Windows Recovery Tool is unable to fix it. So, there is a good idea to find a good replacement.
I’ve tested many of them, both free and paid. And you can find many good tutorials about such software in the Internet. So, I limit myself to underline here only important factors of the programs I’ve checked:
1. Easeus Partition Master 4.11 Profesional: a good replacement for Partition Magic, with GUI even very similar to it. Only take into consideration that some operations takes incredible times in it (in comparison to other software this kind). For example, if you’re splitting one partition into two, by changing it size down and creating new partition in unallocated area, then Easeus Partition Master will take a few hours to complete this task, as it is always moving partition data (good question, what is it moving?). While all other software I’ve tested is moving partition data when you are actually moving a partition. And when only downsizing it, whole process takes a few minutes (as there actually isn’t anything to move — you’re changing size of partition by reducing it’s free space!).
2. Partition Commander and Partition Magic are broking MBR (Master Boot Record) on disks or partitions with installed Windows Vista and 7. Therefore they should generally be treated as one big piece of shit under Windows higher than XP. You may consider using them for external disk but avoid as hell touching any system disks or partitions with them.
3. gParted and Acronis Disk Director Suite can’t convert NTFS partition to FAT32 without loosing data. Even if their producers or users claims something different. Tested and proved that those two can do this only by formatting partition, so using it for different purpose (conversion without loosing data) is generally a waste of time. Of course most disks and partitions management software is able to do other way conversion (FAT32 to NTFS) without loosing data, but this is also easily available directly in the system and you don’t need huge software for this small purpose.
Seem, that this is all, that I’ve tested. I decided to continue using Easeus Partition Master even with problems described above.