Legit Reviews

I just reinstalled my OS to XP Pro and it obviously didn't have SP1 or SP2, so it shows 137GB as my C: drive and 170Gb as unallocated. Is it more efficient to merge the two, or to just make a new partition with the unallocated space?

I'm looking for a freeware partition program for XP, that is similar to partition magic. Anyone use anything that works well?

Thanks!

Gparted works awesome for me

Gparted second vote.

Dan

3rd vote for GParted

4th for GParted

Yet another vote for Gparted. The LiveCD works extremely well. I used it before for partitioning multi-boot XP & Kubuntu. Now I use it all the time to prep hard drives before OS install.

Woot, Thanks everyone!

I'm thinking its more effective to merge the 2 partitions, than to make a new partition from the unallocated space. Any opinions?

Depends on what you want to do with it. I would just make another partition.

My only concern is speed. The unallocated space partition will just store more games and programs. Will it take longer, or noticeably longer to access data in the partition as opposed to accessing data on C:?

Noticeably? No, not really. I've got mine divided into three partitions - 10GB OS & programs, 4GB swap, and the rest data (includes Documents and Settings folder). I realise separating the OS and swap file to different partitions even lowers performance a bit, but at least now I don't run out of space for the swap file anymore. Of course, if you've got an extra hard drive, moving the swap file to the extra drive should boost performance a bit.

I read an interesting article on partitioning the other day, made some good points. I forget where I read it so I'll try to give a short synapse...basically, it recommended having many separate partitions rather than one (or two) big ones.

One reason is when your HD gets fragmented, it's usually just because of certain programs so the partition those programs are on get fragmented. If that partition is large, it will take FOREVER to defrag but if it's just a small partition it won't take as long.

Another reason is that the platter spins at the same rpm no matter what so the linear velocity at the beginning of the drive (outside) is faster than at the end (inside), therefore, the data at the beginning of the drive can be read faster than that at the end.

Here's how I have my drive partitioned up (well, until I have the funds for a couple Raptors in RAID):
beginning|[25gb for Vista] [15gb for XP] [80gb for Games] [Unallocated] [250gb for Multimedia]|end

Still need a documents partition...how'd I forget that? Anyway, it's up to you really...as for a disk partitioner, I just popped in a Knoppix disk and ran QtParted (same as gParted, so unless you already have a Knoppix disk, just use gParted) for my partitioning. If you're wondering, I plan on adding linux to that Unallocated area later.

Very good info...thanks!

I google partition manager find some freeware bellow:

paragon http://www.paragon-software.com
I have not used,no comment!

easeus partition manager
I download from brother soft
http://www.brothersoft.com/easeus-parti ... 51814.html

It worked OK, but failed when i tried to merge partition. so i have to allocated the free space to another partition. Partition magic may merge two partitions which will cost you $69.95

cute partition manager
http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/freewar ... load.shtml