Managing Disk Partitions (For Free!)

Once in a while I like to throw a bone to the power users among my readers, and today's your lucky day: Here's a new utility you have to get, perfect for managing your hard drive partitions no matter how they're formatted. Best of all: It's free.

GParted is a front-end for GNU Parted, a Linux utility that hardcore wireheads can use to manage disk partitions to their heart's content. But GParted is graphical and user-friendly enough that you don't need to be an expert to use it. Just burn the application to a CD and use it to boot the computer. You'll have instant access to all the partitions on your PC (or on the external devices connected to that PC), which you can then delete, create, reformat, and resize with ease, perfect, for example, if you want to dual boot Linux and Windows on one machine.

Installing GParted means downloading an ISO image and burning it to a CD (you can use Nero or the free ISO Recorder). If you're not comfortable burning an ISO, GParted is probably not for you. But if you're considering purchasing something like Norton Partition Magic (which runs $70), GParted is a heck of a great deal.