Partition Magic++

[unixronin]

So, who knows Powerquest — now Symantec — Partition Manager?

Nice tool, huh?  But not too cheap.  And it barfs on Vista-created partitions.  And certain types of partition table ... non-compliancies will cause it to barf in the same way.¹  (It can in theory fix these non-compliancies, but only if you boot from a rescue disk.)  And none of these problems are ever going to be fixed, because after Symantec bought Partition Magic from Powerquest in 2003, the first thing they did was freeze it.  They have never released a single upgrade since they bought it, and have declared that they never intend to do so.  In effect, they bought it to EOL it ... but they keep on selling the obsolete version anyway.

I discovered an alternative today:  EASEUS Partition Manager.  It's almost a functional clone of Partition Magic 8, as long as you don't need it to recognize non-Windows partitions ... except that it works on Vista partitions.  And doesn't crash on XP's non-conforming partition tables.  (In fact, it automatically fixes the problems the first time you do anything to the affected partition.)

And best of all, the Home Edition — for personal use — is free.

[1]  Hands up anyone who's surprised that Windows XP writes partition tables that do not fully comply with the standard partition table spec.

Comments

[databeast.livejournal.com]

'partition manager - for everyone too dumb to run gparted'

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

What you said!