Nice free â€œWindowsâ€ partition manager

**gonwk** · 13 Feb 2009, 01:21 PM

Hi ABuilder,

Good show ... too bad it does not support VISTA 64-bit yet. BTW, EASEUS products are always good!

G!

**Abuilder** · 13 Feb 2009, 01:35 PM

gonwk
The Pro version supports XP&Vista 64 bit. Not free but still cheaper than PartitionMagic.

**MilesAhead** · 13 Feb 2009, 03:20 PM

You can also get the old Paragon 8.5 commercial version via a free registration scheme:

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2229498/paragon-hard-disk-manager-se

Unfortunately I don't think you can install on 64 bit. If you have a 32 bit system you may be able to install and then burn the bootable CD to use on your 64 bit system. But I'd research it. Their Drive Backup Express freebie has a 64 bit Vista version that I'm using. I don't know why they didn't do it for this too. Maybe they just took the 8.5 Personal edition the way it was with 32 bit Vista support and let it be given as freebies.

It's one of those deals when you install you have to go online for the free registration number. I did that with the Drive Backup Express and it didn't give me any problems. Very convenient to back up to external drive Live using the Shadow Copy service, rather than booting to CD/DVD.

**gonwk** · 14 Feb 2009, 01:58 PM

Hi Abuilder & Miles,

Thanks Guys ... Wish You Both a Great Valentine's Day with Your Better Halves!

G!

**tonysmith1929** · 15 Feb 2009, 06:13 AM

Hi... I downloaded this freebie, seems good, but am a little confused (probably old age !!!) My existing HD is partitioned C and D, D being HPs backup/restore section.
Also have an empty 300gb exiernal drive,new. Can I copy both C an D drives to the external drive, INCLUDING the OS, if so, and if original HD packs up, can I boot from external and copy it all back to a new internal HD....?????? Thanks

**UncasMS** · 15 Feb 2009, 07:33 AM

@ abuilder:

nice post - tried this freeware today as i had to re-do one machine and easus partition manager worked like a charm (reminded me very much of norton's/powerquest's partition magic in terms of look, feel and result)

@ tonysmith1929

this partition manager is not meant to create backups of your two partition

using any drive image software (like acronis true image or norton ghost or drive image from symantec/powerquest) you can only backup ONE partition at ONE time but in your case simply create a backup of your drive c first and then create another backup of your drive d

later on you would have to get a new drive (in case the old one dies) and partition it to two parts roughly like there were before and then restore the two images containing your data to the two different partitions

in order to run the restore function one of course will have to have an imaging software up and running.
so either work from another pc where the software is installed and were this external drive is connected to as well as the new harddrive will have to be connected to temporarily or make sure to have some boot-cds at hand which contain the software to restore your images.

**MilesAhead** · 15 Feb 2009, 07:45 AM

@ tonysmith1929 for what you want to do you can use Paragon Drive Backup Express 9.0

You can back up the entire HD to an external file. Also it has a burning tool to create a Linux-based bootable restore CD. If your HD is hosed you boot the CD and lay the entire drive back on from the external backup(or you can choose to do just one partiton or whatever.) The Restore CD has USB support and popular netword card drivers. I've restored by booting the CD and it sees the external drive as soon as it comes up. When you do the backup there's check boxes for selecting master boot record and partition table, and which partitions to back up. When you do a restore you select the archive an d it shows you which partitions you can restore etc..

When I played around with W7 beta, to get rid of it and put the system back the way it was I just booted the CD and did a restore. The boot manager(I was booting both Vista and XP) and all was put back just like it was. No worries.

From what I can see so far, the only difference between the Express free edition and the Personal Edition I paid $40 for is the Personal Edition lets you do file only backup if you want and/or you can exclude folders. For instance, I exclude my DVD folder since I don't want to slow down the restore with copying video files.

**blutach** · 15 Feb 2009, 07:19 PM

I tried Easeus Partition Manager today - wanted to increase my C: drive (from 15Gb) on my notebook by 3Gb and decrease the D drive (from 40Gb) by the same amount.

I am running XP SP3 on C: and no other OS.

It asks me to reboot and on doing, it moved the D drive "forward" OK, but refuses to increase the C drive's partition (well, it looks like to does it very quickly, as I would expect but then returns with the following error message):

Failed to complete the batch operations!
Message (364): EASEUS Partition Manager cannot support the special feature on the operating NTFS volume.

And it tells me to press any key to reboot.

So, I tried to do this in 2 steps. Still no go. Now I've got 3400Mb unallocated in between C and D

Anyone know how to get this going?

EDIT: Seems this indicates one or more bad sectors on the disk. I'm doing a chkdsk now (still 3 bad clusters

) but is there other "more forgiving" software that can do the trick if that doesn't work?

Regards

**kevdriver** · 15 Feb 2009, 10:12 PM

Les, perhaps the actual partition magic pro would fix this for you. Let me know.

Hope you were good to Mom for Valentines.

**Chewy** · 16 Feb 2009, 01:20 AM

I suspect when the drive was first set up someone used the quick format option and not the slow one where bad sectors are marked and set aside

I had a new laptop hard drive where I did that and within weeks errors in system files started showing, I slow formatted all 250 gigs then

**MilesAhead** · 16 Feb 2009, 03:01 AM

Les, according to the write-up

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/downloads/2229498/paragon-hard-disk-manager-se

does everything but delete partitions. Since you already have free space it should merge it for you.

btw what OS are you running? I thought if you had adjacent free space the Disk Management in XP Pro would expand the previous volume to incorporate it.

**Abuilder** · 16 Feb 2009, 03:10 AM

Les
After running a surface scan on both C: & D: try running Partition Manager again and make sure to shut down as many programs as possible. Like the firewall, virus, etc.
You donâ€™t have Demon Tools running on that thing I hope.
If you do truly have some clutters that are flagged as bad, about the only program that I know of that can possibly recover them is Spinrite by Gibson Research.
Unfortunately Chewy is right. Way to many people/companies setup HDâ€™s using a quick format that doesnâ€™t check for errors on the disk.

**UncasMS** · 16 Feb 2009, 03:14 AM

HDD Regenerator is quite usefull as well when it comes to bad sectors

**doctorhardware** · 16 Feb 2009, 04:14 AM

Spinrite is also a fine program that has been around for a long time. The program will more any data that is in bad sectors and mark the sectors as unusable.

Nice free â€œWindowsâ€ partition manager