MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition 9.0 features and review
Read the review of Minitool Partition Wizard Free edition 9.0 and see what this free utility has to offer. Know what features make it more useful that the Windows native disk management utility and if it really delivers what it promises.
Window's build in disk management utility is powerful enough to do almost all the basic tasks you might need to perform to manage your local storage, but if you need more advanced options then MiniTool Partition Wizard provides you a lot of tools to do customizations at the deepest levels. We here at Techulator, we have reviewed Minitool's Partition Wizard's previous versions too and even now don't have any hesitation to recommend it to our readers. Let's delve deeper and see what new Minitool has brought in its latest Partition Wizard version.
Being a major release, the main two changes in this version are the new flat look that has been optimized to work with Windows 8.1 and the ability to migrate your Windows OS to SSD or hard drive in a single step.
If this is the first time you are looking for a third party disk partitioning software or just your first time with MiniTool's Partition Wizard then let me tell you that it comes with a host of features. The basic but most commonly required features are Format, Delete, Move/Resize, Extend, Merge, Split and Copy a partition. The more advanced features which ideally you should not touch unless you exactly know what you are doing are Set Label for a partition, Aligning it, Explore or Hide a partition, Change Drive Letter, Change Cluster Size, Check File System health, Convert from NTFS to FAT, Set a Partition as Primary, Change Serial Number, Wipe Partition and few more.
Right now I am using Windows 10 Technical Preview and the fact that Minitool Partition Wizard is working fine on it gives you enough hint that it will work with all the latest Windows versions too. Officially, it has compatibility with Windows XP, 7, 8 and 8.1. For Windows servers you would have to go for the premium versions.
The UI gives you detailed information about the total storage on your system which may be in form of assigned Partitions or free storage or reserved memory by the operating system. You can also see the filesystem status, type, storage capacity from the home screen of the software itself. Like I told you before, chances are that unless you work in Storage domain, you won't be familiar with many of the terms mentioned in the UI of Minitool Partition Wizard. You should use your search engine to learn more about these terms or you can refer the Help section which might give you some information about these. We have reviewed Ease US Partition Wizard sometime back and comparatively we found the interface of Minitool Partition Wizard easier to navigate.Partition and Memory management tasks
I tried a few tasks with this tool like reducing the size of one partition and allotting the freed space to another partition and one nice thing I noticed is that you can queue the steps, it means you don't have to wait for one step to complete before you can execute the next one. You just mention all the steps at once and then the tool takes over from you, freeing you to do other things. For instance here first I had to free space and then second step was to allot the freed space to the other partition, the whole process took a few minutes but input from me barely took one-tenth of the time it took for the process to complete.
It even detects removable storage like SD card and works on that too. You can wipe or partition the SD card as comfortably as it was a local storage on your computer.
Obviously, the more advanced features like Merge partition and the ability to handle dynamic volumes is not present in the free edition, but for an average home user there is everything present in this free utility from MiniTool.
You can even create a bootable CD of Minitool Partition Wizard which will give you the ability to use the features of this software even if your Windows has corrupted. Just put in the CD and boot with it to get the same window of Minitool Partition Wizard as you are getting while running on Windows.Wrap up
There is no doubt that Partition Wizard from Minitool is one of the top software to compete in the Disk Partition Tools category. It performs well in what it offers and efficiently executes the storage management tasks so crucial to your computer.
Pros: Works even in boot mode, has a lot of features for a free utility, allows queuing up of steps, a complete package for a home user.
Cons: Can be a bit confusing for novice users.
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