Free Partition and File Management Software

Today I wanted to talk about some free partition and file management software that I think every computer techie should know about.  I've mentioned this before on my blog in other posts, but I wanted to highlight them in their own post.

Back in the last 90s into the early 2000s if you wanted to change partitions on a computer hard drive you typically had to back up all the data, blow away the partitions, create the new partitions, and restore the data - a process that took a long time.  So when this product called PartitionMagic from PowerQuest allowed you to restructure partitions without having to back up and restore the data came along, it seemed just like it's name... magic.  The thought of moving, resizing, changing the type, etc. of partitions on a computer with live data on them was unheard of.  Of course, PartitionMagic wasn't cheap for this cool feature.  Fast forward to today and now there are several good free options for moving, resizing, and otherwise editing partitions.  My favorite is Partition Wizard Home Edition.  This product is built on top of the Linux kernel and is available for download as a bootable CD.  There's also a Windows version, but I recommend the bootable Linux CD.  I use this tool a lot, both at home and work and I've never once had a problem.

Another similar utility is DiskCopy by EaseUS.  This tool allows you to clone partitions and disks which is great if you're replacing on hard drive with another.  I don't use this nearly as much as Partition Wizard, but it's a useful tool to keep around.

If you're looking to destroy data on your hard drive so you can sell/give away your hard drive, look no further than DBAN (Darik's Boot And Nuke).  DBAN is a bootable CD (or floppy) that will securely erase all data on your hard drive.  Most people don't know this, but deleting a file, even reformatting a hard drive, does NOT destroy the data.  There are tools out there that allow you (or someone else) to recover deleted data from a hard drive.  But if you use a tool like DBAN the data cannot be recovered.

Similar to DBAN is SDelete from SysInternals.  SDelete is a command line utility for Windows that allows you to securely delete a single file, multiple files, or entire directories.  If you need to wipe an entire disk use DBAN, but if you want to delete some files and not others, use SDelete.

And finally, assuming you accidentally deleted a file/folder and didn't use a tool like SDelete or DBAN, you can try and recover those files using a recovery tool.  My favorite is NTFSUndelete.