So what do we use instead of PartitionMagic now that Symantec's killed it?

Question

Apparently, since the last time I had to do a lot of playing with partitions and images, Symantec acquired, neglected, and killed off PartitionMagic. (Yeah, it's been a while.) What, then, are we meant to use instead, that gives us that general behavior of actually doing what it's goddamned supposed to that PartitionMagic so nobly displayed?

How things have changed. These days I'd vote to close this in the blink of an eye. — John Gardeniers, Aug 27 '12 at 09:41

score 31 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 19 '10 at 05:41

31

There are quite a few alternatives, both commercial and Open Source. One of the more popular OS programs is GParted.

answered Jul 19 '10 at 05:41

John Gardeniers

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I find the gparted live CD invaluable on that front. – Rodger Jul 19 '10 at 07:50
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+1 Easy to use and free, though even Windows in its latest incarnations can finally handle most partition resize jobs just fine. Also, as Partition Magic seriously required a working backup, I always found it more efficient to just wipe and reload a machine instead anyway. – Oskar Duveborn Jul 19 '10 at 14:05
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Windows can resize a partition from the end only, it cannot move a partition, or shrink it from the beginning. gparted can! – gbjbaanb Jul 19 '10 at 14:18

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 19 '10 at 15:38

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My vote is for Gparted also. I have a USB stick as an Ubuntu 10.04 boot disk. Gparted let's you move and resize NTFS partitions, which is especially handy when managing windows boxes :)

answered Jul 19 '10 at 15:38

speeds images

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score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 19 '10 at 05:36

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Acronis Disk Director suite

Paragon Partition Manager

answered Jul 19 '10 at 05:36

Sergey

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score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 21 '10 at 12:34

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There is also a gparted Live CD

answered Oct 21 '10 at 12:34

gWaldo

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score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 19 '10 at 12:15

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There are a number of programs that do this, some of them have been mentioned already. If you're interested in something that also offers a compliment of other tools in addition to several partition managers you might try MultiBoot USB.

answered Jul 19 '10 at 12:15

joeqwerty

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score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Jul 19 '10 at 06:06

While I myself voted for GParted, there is also EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition (Sure, not for business).

I`v been doing job with that soft, but once some errors occured (nothing was corrupt, but couldn't finish the job), I tried GParted to do the same and it succeeded.

So what do we use instead of PartitionMagic now that Symantec's killed it?

6 Answers6