Removable drives receive drive letters based on availability. For example your USB flash drive could receive the drive letter G when it is plugged in alone, but it might receive the drive letter H, when your external hard drive was plugged in and grabbed the G first. As this demonstrates, drive letter assignments for removable drives are not permanent.

In some cases, however, a permanent drive letter assignment is desirable. Let’s say you have set up a backup routine. Your storage location is an external hard drive. You specified the path to this hard drive, assuming it would always be assigned the same drive letter. If however, another device is connected and occupies the respective drive letter, the backup may fail. To avoid this scenario, you can permanently assign drive letters to selected devices.

DriveLetterView

DriveLetterView is a freeware utility for Windows, which provides a list of currently and previously connected devices and their respective drive letters. Moreover, you can use this tool to remove devices or change their drive letter assignment. If desired, a list of all drive letters with assigned drives and other properties can be exported to a simple text file or saved in CSV, XML, or HTML format.

DriveLetterView comes in a ZIP archive and being a portable tool it doesn’t require an installation. Simply extract the files, run the EXE file as Administrator, and you will see a list of your drives, similar to the one shown in the screenshot below. Note that if your anti-virus software reports DriveLetterView as malware, it’s a false positive!

Using the red X in the top left you can delete drive letters of devices that are not currently plugged in. This way you can make drive letters available and subsequently assign them to other devices from the list.

Note that DriveLetterView cannot be used to change the drive letter of a local hard drive!

Windows Computer Management

In case you are wondering whether assigning drive letters can be done in Windows without the help of third party software, the answer is yes, this is possible. It does however require that the respective device is connected.

In Windows 7, click the > [WINDOWS] + [R] key combination and run > compmgmt.msc. Within the > Computer Management window switch to > Storage > Disk Management.

You can now right-click on any of the devices listed on the left and select > Change Drive Letter and Paths… In the window that opens, click the > Change… button. In the next window, select the desired drive letter and > OK your changes.

The change is instant. The next time you connect that device to your computer, it will again be assigned the drive letter you selected. Moreover, the Windows solution also allows you to change drive letters of local hard drives. Be careful though as these changes can render software unusable.

Summary

Using DriveLetterView instead of the native Windows Computer Management tool not only has the advantage that it requires less mouse clicks. In contrast to the default Windows solution, you can easily manage drives that are not currently connected, but were previously connected to your computer. DriveLetterView thus is a handy tool for those of you who frequently switch around external drives and wish to permanently assign drive letters to specific devices.

I recently wrote about NirLauncher, a portable software library from NirSoft that comes packed with over 100 freeware utilities. DriveLetterView is one of these free tools.

How many removable drives do you have and are you going to take advantage of the possibility to permanently assign drive letters?

In Windows 7 and Windows Vista, resizing your volumes or re-partitioning your hard drive has become a lot easier than in previous Windows versions. However, there are still a few pitfalls that will require you to use third party applications rather than the internal Windows Disk Management tool. In this article I will show you how to change the size of volumes or create new ones and which tools to use.

Windows Disk Management

As mentioned above, Windows Vista and Windows 7 are equipped with a Disk Management tool. With this tool you can partition your hard drive, shrink or expand volumes, and create new ones. I will walk you through the process as seen on Windows 7.

To launch the Disk Management tool go to > Start and type > partition in the search box. From the results click > Create and format hard disk partitions.

You will now see a list of volumes and their properties. They can refer to several hard drives or partitions on a single hard drive. Below is a screenshot of what my single hard drive setup looks like.

Right now I have three volumes (C, D, and E) and some unallocated space.

Example 1:

Let’s say you have a single hard drive and a single volume called C on which your operating system and all your programs are installed and on which you keep all your personal files. You have several GB of free space and want to create a new volume or partition called D to store all your personal data. You do not have any unallocated space.

Before you can create a new volume, you must free up space from which you can create it, meaning you have to create unallocated space. To do this, right-click on > C and select > Shrink Volume… Windows will take a moment to query the volume for available shrink space.

In my example, I only have 6217 MB available for shrinking. That’s because I already freed up 9.77 GB in unallocated space for this demonstration. You should leave at least 5 GB of free space on your C volume for Windows updates, program installations, and general Windows operations. Keep in mind that 1GB equals 1024 MB, in other words, leave at least 5120 MB of ‘available shrink space’ on C. Once you have decided on the amount of space to shrink, click the > Shrink button and wait a moment.

You will now see the space by which you shrinked C as unallocated space right next to your C volume. To create a new volume, right click > Unallocated and select > New Simple Volume…

The Volume Wizard will guide you through the process. You can decide how much of the unallocated space you want to assign to the new volume, you can pick a drive letter, and a file system.

For the changes to come into effect, you have to reboot the computer.

Example 2:

Let’s say you already have two volumes called C and D. You want to shrink C and then add the unallocated space to D. You would go about it just as in the previous example, only that after creating the unallocated space, you would not create a new volume, you would attempt to extend volume D.

When you have unallocated space, you can in theory extend any partition by that space. Simply right-click the respective partition and select > Extend Volume… Now you might realize in frustration that this option is greyed out and hence not available.

This is a limitation of Windows 7. You can only extend a volume with unallocated space that is located to its right. So in my setup, I could extend C, but I cannot extend D. This is when you need to turn to third party applications. I recommend EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition.

Another limitation in Windows 7 is that you can only shrink or extend NTFS or unformatted partitions.

EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition

In principle, this tool works the same as the Windows Disk Management tool. The difference is that it offers more features and is a lot more flexible, for example because you can extend a partition, regardless of where the unallocated space sits.

Right-click the respective partition and select > Resize/Move partition.

In the window that opens you can either enter the numbers or drag the little balls on either side of your volume to change the size or move the partition.

When you’re done click > OK. In my example, the result looks like this:

To make the changes come into effect, you must reboot your computer. Note that since the entire volume has to be rewritten, this process can take quite a while. Moreover, you should make a backup of your data before you are moving a partition!

If you found this post helpful, you might also be interested in the following articles:

• How To Set Up A Second Hard Drive In Windows: Partitioning
• How To Format A Large Hard Drive With Either FAT Or FAT32
• Create & Resize Windows Partitions with Free PartitionManager

How many internal hard drives and partitions on each drive do you have and if you have more than one, what do you use them for?

So first of all, this limitation only exists in recent versions of Windows. Secondly, Windows does recognize large hard drives formatted with FAT / FAT32. And finally, you can circumvent the 32 GB limit.

In this article I will show you how to format a large hard drive with FAT / FAT32 or create a 32+ GB partition with said file system.

The Manual Way

You don’t need a tool to circumvent the 32 GB partition limit, you can do it manually and it’s fairly easy. Rather than using the standard Windows formatter, you switch to the command line.

In Windows XP, go to > Start > Run. In Windows Vista and Windows 7, go to > Start, type > Run in the search field, and launch it. Type > cmd into the text field and click > OK.

Enter the following command at the prompt: format /FS:FAT32 X:

Replace the letter X with the drive letter for the external device you wish to format and hit > Enter.

That’s it! The formatting may take a long time as it did in my 15.2 GB example above, but it works.

The Tools

If you don’t want to mess with the command line, you can use tools that apply the same principle, but provide a nice graphical user interface (GUI) for your convenience.

SwissKnife (Windows XP)

SwissKnife is a simple partition manager that lets you do more than just format your hard drive with different file systems. You can also use it to delete, create, and resize partitions and it works faster than Windows.

However, the free version of SwissKnife is only available for Windows 95 through XP. If you would like to use it on more recent versions of Windows, you have to purchase SwissKnife Premium or try one of the other free tools below.

Fat32Formatter

Windows 7 users can try Fat32Formatter. It’s a self-executable tool with a decent GUI that allows you to format large hard drives with FAT32. Balloon tips guide the user through its functions. No other documentation is available.

This tool is almost too simplistic. While you can delete a partition and create new ones, you cannot choose the allocation unit size, which does make a different as I outlined previously.

FAT32 Format

FAT32 Format is another very basic portable GUI tool that doesn’t require installation. It just does one task, and it does it very efficiently: format drives with FAT32.

FAT32 Format works with Windows XP through 7 and supports up to 2TB partition size. You can choose the allocation unit size and give the partition a new volume label. Unfortunately, it can not create new partitions.

If you want to manage your partitions, i.e. create new ones or change their size, I recommend that you use dedicated software. First, create a partition that you want to format with FAT32. Then, in case your partition manager can’t do it, use one of the tools above to carry out the FAT32 formatting.

For detailed instructions, see James’ article on How To Set Up A Second Hard Drive In Windows: Partitioning. For a third party alternative to Windows’ partition manager, see Justin’s article on GParted ““ The Ultimate In Partitioning Software. If you are interested in the limitations of FAT32 in Windows XP, check out the respective Microsoft Support article.

What is your favorite file system? Did you switch from NTFS to FAT32 before and what were the reasons?

Image credit: Kar

Most of us go with the default settings without second guessing their logic. Naturally, optimal settings depend on the type of hardware to be formatted and what you are planning to do with it.

This article will hep you make the best choice. It explains what each option does and which one is best suited for your drive and expected use.

How To Format a USB Drive In Windows

Whether you’re running Windows XP, Windows Vista, or Windows 7, the steps are essentially the same. Connect the USB drive, go to > Computer or > My Computer, right-click the drive and select > Format… from the menu.

The formatting options you have are > File system, > Allocation unit size, > Volume label, and >  Format options.

To format your drive, you simply make your selection, click > Start, click > OK to confirm that you really want to erase all data and the drive will be formatted.

However, before you proceed with formatting, you will want to understand what each of these options actually means. So let’s analyze them one by one.

Which File System To Choose?

In Windows 7 you will see a maximum of four different file systems: NTFS, FAT, FAT32, and exFAT. You will actually not see FAT and FAT32 if your drive is larger than 32 GB. So what is the difference between those file systems and which one should you choose? Let’s look at the benefits of each.

NTFS Compared To FAT & FAT32:

• read/write files larger than 4 GB and up to maximum partition size.
• create partitions larger than 32 GB.
• compress files and save disk space.
• better space management = less fragmentation.
• allows more clusters on larger drives = less wasted space.
• add user permissions to individual files and folders (Windows Professional).
• on-the-fly file encryption using EFS (Encrypting File System; Windows Professional).

FAT & FAT32 Compared To NTFS:

• compatible with virtually all operating systems.
• takes up less space on USB drive.
• less disk writing operations = faster and less memory usage.

exFAT Compared To FAT & FAT32:

• read/write files larger than 4 GB.
• create drive partitions larger than 32 GB.
• better space management = less fragmentation.

Due to its nature, FAT or better yet FAT32 are suitable for drives smaller than 32 GB and in an environment where you never need to store files larger than 2 or 4 GB, respectively. In other words, any regular sized hard drive (60 GB +) should be formatted with NTFS.

However, due to the way NTFS works it is not recommended for flash drives, even when they are bigger than 32 GB. This is where exFAT comes in. It unites the essential advantages of FAT (small, fast) and NTFS (large file size supported) in a way that is optimal for flash drives.

Keep in mind though that FAT and FAT32 are the only file systems that are cross-platform compatible. NTFS is supported by Linux, but it requires a hack or third party application to work on the Mac. exFAT on the other hand is supported in Snow Leopard, but drivers are required for Linux.

If for compatibility or speed reasons you want to go with FAT or FAT32, always go with FAT32, unless you are dealing with a device of 2 GB or smaller.

Which Allocation Unit Size Works Best?

Hard drives are organized in clusters and the allocation unit size describes the size of a single cluster. The file system records the state of each cluster, i.e. free or occupied. Once a file or a portion of a file is written to a cluster, the cluster is occupied, regardless of whether or not there is still space.

Hence, larger clusters can lead to more wasted or slack space. With smaller clusters, however, the drive becomes slower as each file is broken up into smaller pieces and it takes much longer to draw them all together when the file is accessed.

So the optimal allocation unit size depends on what you want to do with your USB drive. If you want to store large files on that drive, a large cluster size is better as the drive will be faster. If, however, you want to store small files or run programs off your flash drive, a smaller cluster size will help preserve space.

Rule of thumb: large drive and/or large files = large allocation unit size

For a 500 MB USB flash drive, rather select 512 bytes (FAT32) or 32 kilobytes (FAT). On a 1 TB external hard drive select 64 kilobytes (NTFS).

What Is A Volume Label?

The volume label simply is the name of the drive. It’s optional and you can basically name your drive anything you want. However, there are a few rules to follow, depending on the file system you’re going to format with.

NTFS:

• maximum of 32 characters.
• no tabs.
• will be displayed with uppercase and lowercase, as entered.

FAT:

• maximum of 11 characters.
• none of the following characters: * ? . , ; : / \ | + = < > [ ]
• no tabs.
• will be displayed as all uppercase.

Spaces are allowed regardless of the file system.

Which Format Options Are Recommended?

During a normal format, files are removed from the drive and the drive is scanned for bad sectors. During the > Quick Format only the files are removed and no scan is performed. Hence go with that option if you don’t have time and are dealing with a healthy or new drive.

If you thought this article was useful, please also check out the following:

• How To Format A New Internal Hard Drive
• How To Completely & Securely Erase Your Hard Drive [Windows]
• How To Make Corrupt USB Jump Drives Work Again

What are your experiences with formatting USB drives and what are your preferred settings?

Image credits: Julien Tromeur

Even if you didn’t crack open the case and add in another drive, you might still want to read on if you’d like to learn about the drive management system in Windows, and what partitions are.

Background – Partitions, and Filesystems

I’ll be throwing around some fairly technical terms today so it’s important you have an overview of what all these terms mean.

To begin with, a partition is a block of space on a hard drive. In Windows terms, you might think of a partition as a single drive letter (like C: or D:). Windows also likes to refer to a partition as a “volume“, but they are the same thing for our purposes. A single hard drive may consist of one, or many partitions – each of which will be assigned their own drive letter in Windows. For most people, a single partition is enough – however most home computers actually have another partition, hidden from Windows, on which recovery programs are placed. If your computer has a message like “Press F2 to enter recovery mode” when you turn it on, chances are you have a secret partition. Some people like to partition their drive so that Windows runs from a small section of the disk, with the data stored on an entirely separate partition – this means that re-installing Windows won’t overwrite your data. In other cases, a hard drive is partitioned in order to allow multiple operating systems to be installed at the same time – on booting the computer, you can then choose which partition you will boot from.

A Filesystem is the particular method by which data is stored on that partition. Which filesystem to choose has been known to cause violent arguments among many geeks, but suffice to say Windows XP used FAT32, Windows 7 uses NTFS, and Linux and Macs use something different entirely. Each filesystem has limitations and advantages, but for our purposes it is useful to know just that:

(a) If you’re planning on dealing with large files (like 4+ GB movies, etc.) you should use NTFS.

(b) If you want to swap drives between systems, you should use FAT32 as Mac OS X cannot write to NTFS without additional software, but you won’t be able to deal with large files.

If you’ve installed a second drive into your Windows machine, I suggest you use NTFS. To make matters more difficult though, a lot of drives come pre-formatted as FAT32 – grrr, what a headache!

Partitioning and Formatting Your Drive in Windows

Launch the disk management app by clicking Start, and typing in diskmgmt.msc – click the application that pops up in the search results. You should see a screen similar to this:

The top half of the display shows what partitions currently exist. The bottom half displays the physical devices – the drives – in your computer. In this case, I have a single 64 GB NTFS partition, which is my C: drive where Windows is currently installed. Beneath it, we have my new 50 GB drive, shown in black because it is currently all free space. Your setup may different though – Windows 7 often creates a 100 MB hidden partiton called “System Reserved” for recovery options, for instance. Note, if you drive came preformatted as a FAT32 partition, Windows may have already assigned a drive letter to it. Make sure you identify exactly which is the new disk.

You can perform various operations on the partition, or the empty space, by right-clicking on it.

If you have an existing FAT32 partition you want to get rid of (be very sure this is the new second drive and not something else), then simply right-click on the existing volume and choose either Format or Delete Volume. Choose Format if you’d simply like to make it into a fresh NTFS partition instead of FAT32. Choose Delete Volume if you’d like to make more than one partition on the drive – for example, one for music and one for movies. You can also choose Change Drive Letter and Paths if you’d just like to change the letter that Windows has automatically assigned it.

Now, having deleted your existing partition or if there wasn’t one to start with, we can go about creating a new one. Right-click on the black empty space to create a new partition by choosing New Simple Volume.

You’ll be greeted by a standard wizard opening screen, and after clicking Next, you can choose how large you partition will be. 1 GB is roughly 1000 MB. The default setting will already be the maximum size, but in this case I’m going to split the drive into two 25 GB partitions (25000 MB) to store different kinds of data.

On the next screen, you can assign it a drive letter. Choose NTFS as the format and give it a suitable name so you can identify the drive. You can then repeat the process by clicking on the remaining Unallocated free space. If it’s the last partition you are making, just leave the size option at the default to use all remaining space. Now you should have some more drives, so check Computer from the Start Menu to see:

I hope you’ve learnt a little about disks and partitions today. They might seem scary and somewhat high level at first, but in reality they’re quite simple. So long as you are careful about what you’re deleting, managing your own disks and partitions is a lot more rewarding than simply taking the options that the manufacturers give to you.

There are also some alternatives to the built in Drive Management application that you might want to consider – like the Free Partition Manager, or Paragon suite of tools.

This week, we will be giving away 50 licenses of this much-needed application worth close to $1000!

Paragon NTFS is as easy-to-use as they come as it works straight out of the box, without the need for any configuration from you. Make sure it was installed correctly by looking up your drive’s file information, and check that your “˜Sharing & Permissions’ shows that you have read and write permissions.

If you want to further configure how you can manipulate your NTFS partitions, go into System Preferences and open up the Paragon NTFS settings were you will find all of your partitions listed.

In addition to enabling read/write access to the NTFS file system, Paragon allows you to also check and repair your partitions. This can be done by launching the Mac Disk Utility, and under the First Aid tab, click on Verify Disk, followed by the Repair Disk to fix any errors that are found.

For users comfortable with using the Terminal, you can get a lot more out of the application, including formatting your NTFS partitions, although 10.5 Leopard users have the benefit of doing this using the app’s GUI through the Mac’s Disk Utility.

The driver is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, 10.5 Leopard and 10.6 Snow Leopard.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, October 9th at 2100hrs PST. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank Paragon Software for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

That’s why we’re offering 50 licenses for Paragon Software’s top-rated Hard Disk Manager 2010 Suite worth over $2000 in total! Find out how you can win a copy for yourself.

Partitioning

Partitioning your hard drive can be an intimidating experience if you don’t know what you’re doing. Paragon takes all the difficulty out of the process, allowing you to create partitions, which is particularly useful if you want to run several operating systems on your computer. Paragon also allows you to easily format, delete, resize and merge partitions.

Backup & Recovery

Backing up all of the data on your hard disk couldn’t be easier using Paragon Hard Disk Manager. Select which partitions of your hard drive you want to backup to three possible locations. Your data can be stored on a local or network drive, can be saved to an FTP location, or you can burn it to a CD or DVD. Restoring data that has been backed up using Paragon is a piece of cake. Simply navigate to the backup that you had created using the software, and follow the steps in the wizard to restore your data.

Copying and Migration

Paragon’s migration feature makes it easy to migrate an entire drive or partition to a new one. Copying a partition is as simple as selecting the partition you want to clone, and selecting the target location for the clone to be stored. The same is true for the hard disk migration feature, allowing you to migrate your entire hard disk to a new location, which makes upgrading to a new machine as easy as can be, restoring your entire system setup.

Security and Optimization

Fine tuning your computer with Paragon’s optimization features will keep your machine feeling brand new. Additionally, if you have confidential documents on your computer, use Paragon’s secure method of wiping entire partitions or disks to ensure that your personal information can never be retrieved.

Boot Management

If one OS simply isn’t enough for you, Paragon makes it easy to both manage several operating systems on one computer and allows you to prepare your computer for a new OS install.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, September 10th at 2100hrs PST. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank the Paragon Software team for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

I like to keep my operating system in its own partition, separate from my personal data like My Documents, My Pictures, My Music, and My Videos. This means that if I ever have a problem with my OS (or want to wipe it, install a different version, or a different OS altogether), I can easily interact with that specific partition and my personal data will be left alone. Partitions are also great for installing multiple operating systems on a disk – I currently have an NTFS partition for Windows 7, an NTFS partition for Windows XP, as well as ext4 and swap partitions for Linux.

Now that you know how useful partitioning your disk can be, you need some good software to do it. In this giveaway, we’re offering 50 copies of Paragon Partition Manager 11 Personal Edition to MakeUseOf readers!

Paragon Partition Manager 11 Personal Edition is great for advanced users and basic users alike. Sporting two interfaces, you can enable as much control as you need when partitioning your hard drive. Power users can reveal advanced controls with the click of a button.

With Partition Manager 11 Personal Edition, you can easily create, delete, resize, and merge partitions. If you have a new hard drive, you can use Create Partition to divvy up your space and select different file systems. If you’re working with an existing hard drive, you can use Delete Partition or Merge Partitions to remove unnecessary partitions and make room for new ones. Finally, you can use Resize Partitions to resize your current partitions to free up more space for data or other operating systems.

You will also have access to sophisticated features like migrating your current hard drive to an entirely different disk (of the same or different size), and also making an identical copy of a current partition.

Before working with partitions, you should always note that any activity that messes with the structure of your hard drive can result in loss of data. This is one of the worrisome parts of disk partitioning, but Paragon Partition Manager 11 Personal Edition mitigates this risk by providing backup functionality to provide a data loss free operation. This feature is worth its weight in gold – you can make changes to your disk without having to worry so much about your data surviving the transition.

You’ll even be reminded to create a recovery CD before you start making changes to your partitions, which I strongly recommend you do.

If you really like tinkering with your system, this software includes a few extra features that I’ve found to be very useful. The Boot Management feature allows you to customize the boot parameters of your system (stuff that anybody who is familiar with the Linux application Gparted would recognize) and also helps you prep your disk for the installation of a new operating system.

Finally, Partition Manager 11 Personal Edition includes a great partition manager with full access to all of the features I previously described – except this time you can easily view partitions across all your disks.  Since I’ve always used Gparted for disk partitioning, I felt very comfortable working in the Partition Manager mode.

How do I win a copy?

It’s simple, just follow the instructions.

This giveaway begins now and ends Friday, 6th August at 2100hrs PST. The winners will be selected at random and announced via email.

Spread the word to your friends and have fun!

MakeUseOf would like to thank the Paragon Software team for their generosity while participating in this giveaway. Interesting in sponsoring? We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with us via email.

Linux gives you access to millions of open source programs that can’t always be found elsewhere. Many of these free applications are amazingly useful, even for die-hard Windows users. GParted is an excellent example of amazing Linux free partitioning software every Windows user should be familiar with.

Why? Because it’s a complete partitioning tool, in many ways a better alternative to Partition Magic. It supports both NTFS and FAT32 (and much more), meaning it can do everything a Windows user would want to do (and much more!) Finally, because you can run it from a Live CD, you can even edit the partition your primary OS runs on–useful when you want that partition to be larger or smaller.

Best of all, Gparted is free partitioning software that’s already included on the Ubuntu Live CD – a tool I recently argued every Windows user should have anyway.

What Is Partitioning?

In essence, partitioning means splitting your hard drive into different sections. To Windows, each of these “sections” will be seen as separate drives – this despite being physically on the same volume.

What’s the point? Well, if your data is on a different partition than your operating system you can replace your operating system without losing your data. Partitioning is also necessary if you want to run more than one operating system on a single computer – for example, Windows and Ubuntu.

A partitioning tool allows you to shrink/extend existing partitions, as well as create new ones. GParted is just such a partitioning tool.

Another such tool is Partition Manager, a program we’ve featured in the past. While decent, Partition Manager cannot be run from a live CD and as such cannot edit your primary partition.

What Gparted Can Do

Fire up GParted and you’ll see your primary drive, ready to be altered. You can delete a partition if you like, or just resize it. To do something all you need to do is right-click the drive or partition you want to edit. The menu that comes up even features sliders you can drag if entering numbers isn’t quite your style.

Don’t see what you want to edit? Know that, in the top-right corner of the window, is a drop-down menu that allows you to select which drive you want to configure.

It’s also worth noting that GParted won’t do anything until you click the “Apply” button in the toolbar. So if you want to see what kind of configurations will work and won’t work go ahead; nothing is altered until you click okay.

Finally, it’s worth noting that partitioning is not without risks. If, for example, you experience a power outage while partitioning the result might be a system that will no longer boot and data that’s hard to recover. Protect yourself from this by using a battery backup, or by ensuring your power source will be consistent.

It’s also a good idea for Windows-types to defragment their hard drive before partitioning. This will greatly increase the effectiveness of your partitioning.

Getting GParted

If you already use Linux, congratulations: you have easy access to GParted. Check your distro’s repositories to install.

If you have an Ubuntu live CD kicking around, congratulations: you have easy access to GParted. Just boot from the disk and find GParted under “System” followed by “Administration.”

If you don’t have a Ubuntu CD, they’re easy to find. Go ahead and download an ISO or have a CD mailed to you free of charge.

If all you want is GParted, consider downloading the GParted Live CD instead. Download it and burn the ISO to disk using your burning application of choice.

Potential Uses

• The Windows installer, particularly the XP one, tends to take forever creating partitions. Use Gparted instead to make installation faster.
• Shrink your XP partition to make room for another OS, like Ubuntu
• Need extra space? Remove the “Recovery” partition that came with your computer and extend your OS partition to take advantage of that extra space (but be warned, only do this if you have an OS CD on hand for re-installation.)
• If you recently bought a bigger hard drive, you can use Clonezilla to copy your filesystem to it and then Gparted to extend your partition to the entire drive.

Conclusion

Gparted isn’t just free partitioning software; it’s the free partitioning software. If you need to rearrange your hard drive this is what you’re looking for, and it’s completely free.

Did you know about this amazing tool before, or are you happy to discover it? Can you think of any more uses for it, or do you have any stories to tell of how you’ve used it in the past?  Feel free to discuss all this and more in the comments below.