Minitool Partitioning Wizard Easy And Free Disk Management

A friend of mine recently bought a new laptop, and the onboard HDD comes split into two partitions only i.e. C:/ and D:/ local disks only. But he needed more partitions to manage the various types of files he usually has on his device. Did you find the same issue?

Disk Partitioning is the first step towards preparing a new disk before using it for storing data. Partitioning the disk drive can help by creating separate regions for different data types, and each region can be separately managed.

Windows Disk Management

Windows users have a relatively easy way of disk management with the in-built Disk Management tool. You can access it by pressing Win + R and typing diskmgmt.msc

Here you can view all the disks that are present, and their format types.

To create a new volume, here are the steps that you need to follow. However, feel free to skip and go right to the easier way given down below.

• To the disk you want to split, right-click on the disk and select ‘Shrink Volume’
• Select how much you want the new disk to be in size, and enter that value in the box where it says, “Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB:”
• This creates an unallocated disk space of the size you just selected
• Right-click on the unallocated space, and select “New Simple Volume”
• Here, allocate the size of the new volume
• Assign the drive a letter
• Format with your required file system format
• Check the “Perform a quick format”
• Click next, and you’ll have a new drive.

Limitations Of The Windows Disk Management

It is obvious that using the disk management system of Windows is troublesome, and long. This increases the chances of error.

You also need to repeat all the steps again and again to create more disk partitions.

Other functions including merge, delete, split and wipe are also difficult to perform and execute here. This is where Minitool comes to aid.

How Minitool Partition Wizard Overcomes These Challenges

Minitool is very easy to use free disk management software that helps overcome these steps by providing a consumer-friendly interface.

Upon downloading and installing the client software available for Windows 10, you are presented with a tabular interface, which lists all the HDD partitions, and provides quick navigation to all the functions on the top and right taskbar.

You can quickly divide any partition by pressing right click and selecting ‘Split’, as easy as that. It supports all the new technologies regarding partitioning which includes Windows dynamic disks and GPT. The commands you give are queued, and then the program asks you to review the changes you make, so you can be safe and not accidentally kill your data.

Features Of The Free Version Of The Minitool Partition Wizard

• First and foremost, the program is very easy to understand and work your way through. All the important functions that you will perform on this app are fairly easy to find with just a single click, and the operations are done within a single dialogue that has easy to understand controls. For a high-risk function, being easy to understand is a must.

• You can run a benchmark against any disk. This lets you measure the performance of the disk, giving you the read and write speeds at various data levels. This is usually done to identify the internal potential for improvement.

• There is an inbuilt disk space analyzer built-in. running the disk space analyzer lists all the different types of files present on the disk. You can use this to quickly isolate required file types, and classify the files by type, size, depth and other attributes.

The Free Version Has Limited Features

The free version is good for splitting and merging and other simple tasks. However, the other functions that seem free are unfortunately not. For the ‘migrate OS’ feature, ‘file format change’ feature and the other utilities, you need to upgrade to the Pro version at $99 for 3 PC lifetime. There is no clear indication which feature is free and which is reserved for the Pro version, and it is frustrating when you want to perform these seemingly free tasks. I would have managed with the red banners screaming pro because of how clean and easy to use the rest of the app is.

With the Pro version, you can change the new partition to a new file format system. You can change the cluster size of the new partition; you can assign a drive letter and change its label. You can merge two partitions without worrying about any loss of data; you can split a large partition into two.

There is a separate wizard available that lets you migrate the OS from one drive to another. This is especially helpful when you upgrade to new hardware and want to keep your existing OS over at the new drive.

In actual performance tests, tasks like resizing and moving completed fairly fast, without any hiccups.

For advanced users, you can convert MBR disk type to the new GPT disk type with the help of the Minitool Partition wizard.

Performance

Minitool Partition Wizard is a lightweight app and is not resource-heavy. It runs one user process that has no high CPU usage. In actual performance tests, tasks like resizing and moving completed fairly fast, without any hiccups.

Conclusion

So there you have it. If you need a free disk partitioning and management tool that handles tasks easily, you can try the Minitool Partitioning Wizard. Minitool also has an automatic file backup software called Minitool Shadow Maker. You can check it out from the given link.

The interface is very user-friendly, with most of the tasks complete within a dialogue and splitting and merging being available in just one click. I especially like the review option, which can prevent any mishaps from happening.  A clear indication of the pro features would be appreciated.