If you want to adjust the size of a disk partition, or if you want to delete or (re)format it, you can usually go to the Disk Management module of Windows. However, for more complex operations it is better to turn to an external and more flexible partition manager, such as NIUBI Partition Editor.
NIUBI Partition Editor Free
PriceFor free
Language
English
OS
Windows XP and above
Website
www.hdd-tool.com 8 Score 80
- Pros
- Extended functionality
- Clear
- Negatives
- Help function only online tutorials
In this article we test the free version of NIUBI Partition Editor, but know that there is also a Professional edition (about 46 euros). The latter version can also be used in a commercial environment and also allows you to create a bootable recovery medium to return to a previous disk state with a mouse click. For the rest, the functionality between the two editions is identical, which is a nice bonus.
Trilogy
Anyone who has worked with external partition managers before will immediately feel at home in the (graphical) interface of this tool: the available tools and functions on the left, a textual partition overview at the top right and a graphic representation below. The range of functions is impressive. In addition to deleting, formatting, and renaming volumes, you can scale, copy, merge, audit, wipe, and defragment volumes, for example. You will also find a few conversion tools here, such as conversions to fat32 or to gpt. NIUBI Partition Editor also comes in handy when you want to migrate or clone an operating system; a wizard will then guide you through the different phases. All in all, clearly more than with Windows Disk Management and than with most other free partition managers. Not only more, by the way: we also noticed that most operations went remarkably fast.
Step-by-step
If we still want to be small: we were unable to expand a partition in one movement with a piece of 'unallocated disk space' over another partition, a little further on the disk. But that worked without any problems when we first moved that free space to the left. The tool is also smart enough not to immediately perform a requested operation. The graphical representation already reflects the consequences of your operation, but it requires explicit confirmation before it actually proceeds.
Conclusion
NIUBI Partition Editor is a versatile partition manager. In addition to classic operations such as moving, scaling or deleting volumes, you can go here for cloning and migrating a system, as well as for wiping and defragmenting data. The interface is well-arranged and a graphical preview provides good insight into the selected operations.
