Free NTFS Partitioner?

[RayH]

Swiss Knife. Run it with the Bart PE plug-in and you can partition a hard drive that has an OS on it.

I think this thing was designed primarily to install new drives. It might hose your data. Dunno and I don't have an extra computer to play around with any more.

[TwoRails]

Sweet!! Nice find, RayH - I'll be D/Ling it for sure.

[glc]

I have my doubts whether this can nondestructively resize or merge partitions - I think we need to find out more about it before recommending it. Yes, I'll do almost anything to avoid paying Symantec 70 bucks, but we need to find something that is tried and proven safe. There are free FAT resizers out there, but NTFS is the elusive one. You don't need a 3rd party tool just to delete and create partitions - the tools that come with the OS can do that fine.

Anyone wanna try it on a test box and report back? If it works, write a review for us.

[RayH]

Note that I was questioning the product, notiing it may only be for installing new drives, and might have the possibility of hosing a disk. If it is designed for installing a new drive, it could save a lot of time over OS tools.

[glc]

Duly noted - not trying to disparage you. I think you are onto something here and am encouraging some testing.

However, I have been bit in the past with 3rd party tools to prepare drives, so I always use native OS tools if they are capable of doing the job, even if it takes more time. If I need to get Win2000 loaded on a drive fast and I know for a fact the drive is 100% healthy (the setup is not capable of a quick format, unlike XP) I'll slave the drive into my Win2000 bench and quick format it with Disk Management first. I don't even use Partition Magic unless I have to - my copy happens to be the last Powerquest issue before the buyout and have no intention of buying any Symantec version.

That said, the BartPE plugin does look interesting. I've got a laundry list of stuff to put on the next BartPE disk I make.

[RayH]

Personally, I'm still lamenting when Ghost and Partition Magic would come with motherboards and other software for free!

[glc]

I hear ya - I'm getting a LOT of mileage out of the software that came with my Apricorn external hard drive housing. It's a rebranded OEM version of Acronis True Image - without the advanced options. It clones and images drives and does that VERY well.