Make Tech Easier » Partition Management

Download EASEUS Partition Master For Free – 24 Hours Only

Damien — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 05:00:03 +0000

We have previously covered how to use the free Easus Partition Master Home edition to resize your hard disk. If you have used and loved the software, then you are now in for a good treat.

MakeTechEasier has collaborated with Partition-Tool to offer you a free download of the highly popular Easus Partition Master. In case you are wondering, this is not a demo download. This is the full feature professional edition with licensing. What used to cost $39.95 is now free – for a limited 24 hours and for MakeTechEasier readers only.

Most people are unwilling to handle any hard disk partitiong issue because it is a complicated task that carries risk of losing all your data, and possibly cause your hard disk to crash. What Easus Partition Master does is provide you with a comprehensive, yet user-friendly hard disk partition management tool to carry out the seemingly difficult task. With Easus Partition Master, partitioning your hard disk is just a breeze.

In the EASEUS Partition Master Professional Edition, you can enjoy all the powerful functions including

Disk copy wizard, partition copy wizard to protect data
1.5TB hard disk supported
Resize and Move partitions
Copy Partition
Copy Disk to protect data
Create, Delete and Format partitions
Hide and Unhide partitions
Create a bootable CD/DVD
and much more.

In addition, it works perfectly with hardware RAID and Windows 2000/XP/Vista (32 bit and 64 bit).

You shall wait no more. Here is the link to download:

http://www.easeus.com/download/pass/epmpro3.zip

The above link will expire on 27 Feb 2009, 11.59pm (Eastern time).

Enjoy the software.

Download EASEUS Partition Master For Free – 24 Hours Only originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Dual Boot Windows Vista And Windows 7

Damien — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 13:05:05 +0000

For those of you who have waited long for the beta release of Windows 7, Micosoft has finally released the link for you to download a copy to test. In case you have not downloaded, here is the link:

Windows 7 beta 32-bit version
Windows 7 beta 64-bit version (the download is no longer available)

The file size is about 2.4GB in size, so make sure you are on a broadband connection and have several hours to spare. You will have to burn it into a DVD to use it.

Once you have downloaded it, you will have to install it on a working machine in order to access the full functionality. As this is still a beta release and not suitable for daily production use, it is not wise to erase or upgrade your existing Vista to Windows 7. A good way is to create a dual boot system where you can choose to boot into Vista or Win 7. Here’s how it’s done:

Shrink your Vista and create new partition

In your Vista, go to Start -> Control Panel. Click on the System and Maintenance.

Scroll down all the way to find the Administrative Tools. Create on the Create and format hard disk partitions. You should see information about your current hard drive partitioning.

Right click on the chart diagram and select Shrink volume.

A window will pop up to ask you to enter the amount of space to shrink. This is the size that you want your new partition to have. For Win 7, you will need at least 10GB of hard disk space. Click Shrink after you have confirmed the shrinking size.

Back to the Disk Management window, you should see two partition now: one is the C drive and a new unallocated partition. Right-click on the Unallocated partition and select New Simple Volume

Set the volume size of the new partition and click Next.

Next, it will ask you to specify the drive letter of the new partition. To avoid confusion with the drive letter of the CD-ROM, I decided to go with G:. You can set your own drive letter though.

In the next screen, you can specify the file format and Volume label. It is recommended to change the Volume Label to something that is easy to identify, such as Windows 7.

The partitioning will now start. Once it is done, you should see something like this.

Close everything. Place in the Windows 7 DVD and restart the computer.

Installing Windows 7

Boot up your computer using the Windows 7 installer DVD (you might have to configure the BIOS to get the computer to boot from CD-ROM). Let’s the installer run and follow the instruction until you reach the point where it asks you to select the installation partition.Make sure you select the partition that you have just created (not the Vista partition).

Finish up the installation. It should be done in about 30 minutes time.

When it’s done, it will auto-restart. On the boot up screen, you should be able to choose between Windows Vista or Windows 7.

To dual boot windows XP and windows 7

The procedure is the same as the dual-boot between windows XP and Vista.

Accessing Windows Vista partition from Windows 7

When you boot into Windows 7, you will find that you won’t be able to access Vista partition. This is because in Windows 7, both the partitions are registered as Drive C:, thus it only displays the partition that the system boots up with. To solve this issue, simply go to Disk Management and change the drive letter of the Vista partition.

In your Windows 7, go to Disk Management.

Right-click on the Vista partition (the one with the blank entry) and select Change Drive letter and Paths

Click Add to assign a drive letter to the Vista partition.

Save and close all windows. The Vista partition should appear in your Explorer now.

How to Dual Boot Windows Vista And Windows 7 originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Resize And Create Partitions With Gnome Partition Editor (GParted)

Damien — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 13:39:16 +0000

For simple resizing of your existing Windows partition, Norm has done a good job in showing you how to get it done with Easus. If you want to do more, such as creating new partitions of different file format (such as Ext3 or HFS), then Gnome Partition Editor (Gparted) is the one for you.

GParted is a powerful application that you can use to change the partition organization therein, while preserving the partition contents. It allows you to resize, move, create and format your partition to various file formats. The file formats that it supports include ext2, ext3, fat16, fat32, hfs, hfs+, jfs, linux-swap, ntfs, reiser4, reiserfs, ufs and xfs. While most partition management software are restricted to a particular platform, GParted is cross-platform compatible and can be used regardless you are using Windows, Mac or Linux.

There ae two ways that you can use GParted – as an application within Linux or as a LiveCD (GParted is also included in the Ubuntu LiveCD). By using it as an application within Linux, you can use it to resize or format a second partition or USB drive. You won’t be able to modify the base partition though.

In this tutorial, we will demonstrate how to use the GParted Lived CD to resize your existing partition and create two other partitions of different file formats.

Important: Before you proceed, please backup all your important documents. Meddling with hard drive partition is not safe and it could potentially destroy all the data in the hard disk. If you need help on backing up your system, here are some articles that you can reference to:

Windows: Backing up Your Windows Data the Simple Way – with Cobian Backup.
Linux (Ubuntu): How To Backup Your Ubuntu System With Remastersys
Others – http://maketecheasier.com/tag/backup

1) Download the latest stable of version GParted iso here. Burn the iso image in a CD.

2) Insert in your newly created LiveCD and boot up your computer into GParted (You will have to configure your computer to boot from CD).

3) On the boot screen, select the first option (Default Setting)

4) GParted will now start to load. When it prompts you to select keymap, choose the default option (Don’t load keymap)

When it prompts you to enter the language, just press Enter to select the default (US English). Press Enter again to start the graphical interface. You will now arrive at the main screen with the GParted window at the center of the screen.

Before we proceed, let’s assume the following scenario: my default partition is of Linux format (ext3) and now I wanted to build a hackintosh and triple boot my PC with Mac, Windows and Linux. In this case, on top of the existing partition, I need to create 2 more partitions – one NTFS partition for Windows and another HFS+ partition for Mac. (This scenario is meant to serve as a illustration of what I am going to do in this tutorial. You can change the setting according to your own situation. The step will be the same.)

5) Highlight the ext3 partition and click on the Resize/Move. Assuming I need 5 GB for Windows and 5GB for Mac, in the field “Free space following“, enter 10000 (Once again, this is for illustration purpose. You will need more than 5 GB to install Windows or Mac.). Click Resize/Move.

6) Back to the main screen, you will now see a new field with unallocated filesystem.

7) We need to further split the new partition to two 5GB partitions. Highlight the unallocated field and click New. Enter 5GB on the “Free space following” field. On the right, choose ntfs from the Filesystem dropdown bar. In the Label, enter Window. This is for identification purpose. You can specify your own label. Click Add.

8) Back to the main screen, you will see a ntfs field and an unallocated field. Similarly, highlight on the unallocated field and click New. On the right, choose hfs+ under the Filesystem dropdown bar. Enter Mac in the Label field. Click Add.

9) You should now see the ntfs and hfs+ fields. Click Apply.

10) As usual, GParted will ask for confirmation before it proceed. Make sure you have already backed up your system. Click Apply to proceed.

11) Once it finishes, you should see the completed changes in the main screen

That’s it.

Note: You can also perform the above procedure with the Ubuntu LiveCD. Simply boot up your Ubuntu LiveCD and access GParted via System -> Administration -> Partition Editor.

How To Resize And Create Partitions With Gnome Partition Editor (GParted) originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Resize Your Partitions with EASEUS Partition Manager

Norm — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:30:35 +0000

If you’ve ever had to resize a partition, or make new partitions, then I completely understand what you most likely went through. Good partition management software for Windows is hard to come by, well the free partition managers anyways. Almost everyone has heard of Partition Magic, but there is a hefty price tag that comes with it.

As it turns out, there is a great application out there just for the Windows home user. It’s called EASEUS Partition Manager, and you should download it today!

In this short tutorial, I’m going to increase the size of the C: drive on my Windows Vista PC.

Important Note: Please backup your data before attempting to make changes to the partitions on your computer. There is always the potential for lost data – so take the time to ensure you have a good backup. If you need some help getting that started, check out this post on Backing up Your Windows Data the Simple Way – with Cobian Backup.

As you can see in the image below, My C: drive is about 40 GB, with only 5 GB of free space available. My D: drive is a second partition on the same physical drive as my C: drive. Under that you’ll notice I have 10 GB of Unallocated space. This is space that was never assigned to anything. I’m going to expand my C: drive to include this space – for a grand total of 50 GB.

The real trick in resizing the first partition on a multi-partition drive is in allocating the space in precisely the right location. In this example, all of the unallocated free space is at the end of the D: drive, which means I’ll have to move it to the beginning of the D: drive, so that I can eventually add it to C: drive. First, I’ll select the D: drive and click on the Resize/Move button. A new window opens up and lets you enter the new settings that you would like to use.

To move the unallocated space from the end to the beginning, simply copy the size from the Space After box and paste it into the Space Before box. The former will automatically reset to zero.

Now you can click Ok. It’s probably best to note that no changes have actually been made at this time. All that has been done is simply a list of changes has been added to a queue. Changes only take complete effect after a reboot.

Now, we still haven’t allocated any space to C: yet, we’ve only re-arranged D: drive. This time, select the C: drive and click the Resize/Move button. Once again we are presented with the change window.

As you can see, the unallocated space is now at the end of the C: drive. This time, drag the little arrow on the right-hand side of the yellow bar all the way to the right. This will stretch the D: partition to the end, and leave you with no unallocated space after.

This essentially completes all of the configuration required to resize the partition. Click Ok. You should be back at the main window again. If you are ready to complete the change, click the Apply button on the lower left-hand side of the window. Like any good piece of software, EaseUs Partition Manager will prompt you several times to make sure you want to continue.

Before you click Yes to both of these, please make sure that you have backed up your important data. Resizing a partition can be dangerous and there is always a risk of failure. If you have confirmed that you have a recent backup, click Yes and get ready to kill some time.

The operation as described above took almost four hours to complete. I wasn’t expecting it to take that long, so it actually seemed much longer as I watched the clock waiting for the work to finish. Here is a screenshot of what you can expect after the reboot.

After the four hour waiting period, Windows booted back up as normal and the new sizing was in effect.

Just to recap, EASEUS is a freeware partition manager for Windows. Most versions of Windows are supported, however 64-bit Vista is not. Don’t forget to get your copy from their download site.

How To Resize Your Partitions with EASEUS Partition Manager originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)