7 Best Disk Partitioning Tools for Windows 11/10 [Ultimate Guide] - Qiling  

The 7 Best Disk Partitioning Tools Free Download for Windows 11/10 [2022]


This page tells what disk partitioning is, the benefits of disk partitioning, and the best disk partitioning tools or disk partition software for Windows 11/10/8.1/8/8/Vista and XP.

disk patitioning

When it comes to partitioning hard drives in Windows with no partition manager software, some of you may feel the same way that things getting complex and inconvenient to resize or move a partition, right?

To keep things simple and your data intact while managing a hard drive or an external storage device, finding a handy and efficient disk partitioning tool seems so necessary. So how will you manage to get such a tool for disk partitioning? Following this guide, we've picked a list of paid and free disk partition software for you to view and get the best out of them to execute disk management tasks efficiently.

In this article, you'll learn:

  • What Is Disk Partitioning
  • What Is the Best Partition Tool? Top 7 Recommends
  • White List of Disk Partitioning Tools Recommend

What Is Disk Partitioning

Disk partitioning or disk slicing is the creation of one or more regions on secondary storage so that each region can be managed separately. These regions are called partitions. It is typically the first step of preparing a newly installed disk before any file system is created...
                                 --Wikipedia

According to Wikipedia, it's clear that disk partitioning is a process that creates one or several partitions on a hard drive, SSD, or an external storage device by using a partition manager tool or software in Windows computers.

Except for creating partitions on a new or a used hard drive, Windows users may also have other partition management needs on their drives, for example, to extend the C drive, merge partitions, convert disks, clone disk, or even migrate OS to a new SSD, etc. 

With the growing demands, it's necessary to find a comprehensive disk partitioning tool to help you partition hard drives and manage disk space on Windows 11/10/8/7. 

The Benefits of Disk Partitioning: Why Do I Need It

So why it's necessary to partition hard drives and manage the storage space on a disk or external storage device? Here, in this part, we'll show you the benefits of disk partitioning:

Items Benefits of Disk Partitioning
For Storage Devices
  • Make full use of space in storage devices.
  • Set a perfect file system to a hard drive, USB, or SD card for gaming, photographing, or storing data.
  • Make full use of hard disk, SSD, or external storage device space. 
For Windows System
  • Separate data and OS, protect data from OS crashes or system failure errors.
  • Optimize OS disk - SSD performance.
  • Improve the reading and writing speed of hard drives.
For Hard Drive or External Storage Users
  • Execute multiple operations on hard drives or storage devices.
  • Stet up disks for specific purposes.

Aside from the above-listed benefits, professional disk partitioning tools are also time-saving and freeing your hands in tackling disk management issues.

What Is Disk Partitioning Tool?

Disk Partitioning Tool, also known as partition manager software or disk utility for Windows, is designed for Windows users to perform basic operations like creating, resizing, formatting, and deleting partitions on a physical disk drive.

The disk partitioning tools could be divided into two types: 

Both two types of tools work to execute basic disk management operations. For some users who want to acquire advanced disk management tasks, such as cloning a big HDD to a smaller SSD or migrating OS from HDD to SSD, a reliable & paid disk partitioning software shall stand out. 

What software do I need to use for disk partitioning? In the next part, we'll be showing you 7 top recommended disk partitioning tools (free and paid), and you can pick one to start partitioning your hard drives, SSD, or external storage devices instantly.

What Is the Best Partition Tool? Top 7 Recommends

While searching disk partitioning tools or disk partition manager software online, you may get a long list of recommendations on the result page. You'll need to take time reviewing each recommendation one by one and even spend money and energy testing these tools.

To save you from this, we spent several days testing and comparing available partition manager tools and software on the market. And here, we come up with a list of the top 7 best disk partitioning tools in 2022 for you:

Note that all the recommended tools all work to partition hard disk partitions and even execute some advanced operations. You can now take a quick view of all the tools and pick one that suits you the most for help.

#1. Qiling Partition Master

Easiest Windows Disk Partitioning Tool & Disk Manager

Qiling Partition Master is a reliable disk partition software that supports Windows 11/10, older Windows users, and even Server users to quickly solve disk partitioning, low disk space, disk conversion, and even OS migration issues on HDD/SSD. 

Its intuitive UI design and simple guide allow users to straightly accomplish disk management tasks without having any IT knowledge or technical skills. It simplifies the complex process into a few simple clicks.

How to Download:

Supported OS: Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista and XP

Feature List:

- Basic Disk Partitioning:

- Advanced Disk Management:

Versions: Free, Pro, Server

Pros & Cons: 

Pros Cons
  • Free version supports basic disk partitioning features
  • Easy to use for beginners
  • Secure data by popping up confirming window before executing operations
  • No data loss for disk conversion or partition conversion
  • Advanced features require software activation to a Pro or even higher editions

How to Partition a Hard Drive/SSD: 

Step 1. Check for free space

To divide a disk partition into multiple ones, you must ensure that there has adequate free space to be allotted.

Step 2. Shrink a disk partition to create unallocated space

By doing so, start with the "Resize/Move" feature. Right-click on a partition with a lot free space and select "Resize/Move".

decrease partition step 1

Drag either end of the partition rightwards or leftwards so you can shrink its size as the red arrow does, in order to get ample unallocated space. You can visually know how much space you've decreased in the "Partition size" area.

decrease partition step 2

At last, you need to click the "Proceed" to save all the changes. Go back on the main window, there should be unallocated space appearing under the same disk of the shrinked one.

Step 3. Create a new partition on unallocated space

The last step is to turn the unallocated space into a usable partition drive with a recognized file system. Right-click on the unallocated space and choose "Create".

create partition step 1

Customize the partition information by choosing a drive letter, partition label, file system (NTFS, FAT32, EXT2/3/4, exFAT) and many more settings in the Advanced Settings.

create partition step 2

Finally, click "Proceed" to confirm that you want to create a partition on the unallocated space. Repeat the whole steps to partition a hard drive in many more partitions.

#2. Paragon Partition Manager

Basic Free Disk Partitioning Tool 

Image of Paragon Partition Manager

Being similar to the Qiling disk partitioning manager, Paragon Partition Manager is also a third-party tool that helps personal users to organize the hard drive and gain additional space in the existing partitions. Users can apply this tool to manage disk partitions on both internal and external hard drives.

According to Paragon, this disk partitioning software is designed for personal and home users. Business users will need to upgrade the Community Edition to Hard Disk Manager at first. 

How to Download: 

Open this link in your browser, and you'll be able to download this software on your PC: https://www.paragon-software.com/free/pm-express/

Supported OS: Windows 7 SP1 and newer

Feature List:

Versions: Community Edition, Hard Disk Manager

Pros & Cons:

Pros Cons
  • Powerful in basic disk partitioning
  • Support convert the partition to Mac file system
  • Free
  • Complex for beginners to start
  • Some features are not available in this edition.

How to Partition a Disk with Paragon Partition Manager:

Step 1. Run Paragon Partition Manager, click the unallocated disk, and select "Create volume". 

Step 2. Set the Volume Label, File System, Drive letter, and click "Place in queue". 

Create partition with paragon partition manger

Step 3. Click "Apply".

#3. Acronis Disk Director

Basic Disk Partitioning Software

Image of Acronis Disk Director

Acronis Disk Director is one of the third-party partitioning software providers, and it delivers a set of basic disk management tools to assist Windows users in optimizing their disk usage and protecting their data. 

Though Acronis Disk Director is not an economic tool for disk partitioning, it still allows normal users to take control of their systems and data via disk cloning, volume recovery, and partition management features. 

How to Download: 

Open the listed link here in your browser, and you'll get access to download it: https://www.acronis.com/en-sg/products/disk-director-home/.

Supported OS: Windows 10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP

Feature List:

Versions: Home version, Workstation, Server

Pros & Cons:

Pros Cons
  • The official site claims a 30-day trial support
  • Price is a bit high
  • Downloading requires names, emails, and even company information
  • Installation requires personal names and emails
  • Installation may fail if the internet connection is unstable.

How to Create a Partition with Acronis Disk Director:

Step 1. Run Acronis Disk Director, right-click unallocated space, and select "Create volume".

Step 2. Set volume type: Basic, Simple/Spanned, Striped, Mirrored, and click "Next".

Step 3. Set volume size, file system, label, etc., and click "Finish" to complete.

Create partition with Acronis Disk Director

#4. GParted

Free Partition Editor for Disk Partitions

Image of Gparted

GParted, known as GNOME Partition Editor, is a free partition editor for managing disk partitions on Windows, Linux, and even Mac computers. Users can apply this tool to resize, copy, and move partitions without data loss. 

GParted is also regarded as an open-source tool that any one of you can have access to it, use, change and even improve.

How to Download: 

Open this link in your browser, and you'll be able to have it: https://gparted.org/download.php.

Supported OS: x86 and x86-64 Linux, Windows, Mac OS X.

Feature List: 

Versions: Windows version, Linux version, Mac OS X version.

Pros & Cons:

Pros Cons
  • Free to use
  • Support multiple platforms
  • Free to partition disks
  • Complex for beginners

How to Partition Hard Drive with GParted:

Step 1. Select an unallocated space on the disk, then click "Partition -> New".

Step 2. Specify the size, alignment, type, file system, and label of the partition.

Create partition with Gparted

Step 3. Click "Add" to create the partition.

#5. PartitionMagic

Old-Fashioned Disk Partitioning Utility

Image of PartitionMagic

PartitionMagic is a utility software program for hard drive partitioning. It was originally made by PowerQuest and later owned by Symantec. On December 8th, 2009, Symantec's website announced that it no longer offers Partition Magic.

Old Windows users can apply this old disk partitioning tool to resize NTFS, FAT32/FAT16 partitions, copy and move partitions, etc.

How to Download: 

No longer available for download from its official site. A third-party platform is available: https://partition-magic.en.uptodown.com/windows

Supported OS: Windows 2000/XP

Feature List:

Versions: No longer available.

Pros & Cons:

Pros Cons
  • Support old Windows systems
  • Ended support
  • Incompatible with new Windows operating systems

Editors' Advice: 

Though PartitionMagic was a popular disk partitioning tool, it now, however, has been lagged back. It's no longer compatible with new Windows operating systems, and its company has ended its support. To take good care of your data, system, and storage devices, we suggest that you stop trying to download this software and use this tool.

#6. Disk Management [Free]

Windows Built-in Disk Partitioning Tool

Image of Disk Management

Disk Management, a Windows built-in disk partitioning tool, is regarded as a disk utility for Windows users to create, extend, delete, format, or even shrink partitions without installing third-party tools. When it comes to disk partitioning, Disk Management works as efficiently as these professional partition manager software

How to Download: 

Disk Management was pre-installed in Windows operating systems. You don't need to install it. See how to open Disk Management in Windows. 

Supported OS: Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP and Windows Servers.

Feature List:

Versions: None

Pros & Cons:

Pros Cons
  • Free to use
  • Handy to partition hard drive without installing software
  • Fulfil basic disk partitioning demands
  • No data protection mechanism could put users' data in danger.
  • Not friendly to beginners

How to Create New Simple Volume with Disk Management:

Step 1. Right-click the Windows icon and select "Disk Management" to open it.

Step 2. Right-click unallocated space on the target disk and select "New Simple Volume...".

Step 3. Specify partition label, file system, volume size, etc., with the onscreen guidelines, and click "Next" to continue.

Create new simple volume with disk management

Step 4. Click "Finish" when the setup guide completes.

#7. DiskPart [Free]

CMD Command-Line Disk Partitioning Tool

Image of diskpart

DiskPart is a utility that processes command lines to execute basic and advanced disk partitioning operations on Windows computers. Aside from disk partitioning, DiskPart can also run some computing commands such as chkdsk, SFC and DISM, etc., to fix disk file system errors.

To experienced Windows administrators and developers, DiskPart is handy and more powerful than Disk Management. For beginners, it's not ideal for handling.

How to Download: 

DiskPart is similar to Disk Management, and Microsoft has pre-embedded it into Windows OS. Uses can simply open it without installation. 

Supported OS: Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP and Windows Servers.

Feature List:

Versions: fdisk (old), DiskPart(now)

Pros & Cons:

Pros Cons
  • Free
  • Get more control over disk partitions than Disk Management
  • Support managing disks with or without booting into Windows
  • Rapid process orders to the operating system
  • Complex to run
  • Hard to remember all syntax parameters
  • No undo options
  • No confirm option and easy to make mistakes
  • Serious errors may happen with false commands

How to Create Partition with DiskPart:

Step 1. Right-click the Windows icon, click "Search", type cmd and right-click "Command Prompt" from the list, and select "Run as Administrator".

Step 2. Type the following command lines one by one and hit Ener each time:

Create partition using diskpart

Step 3. Type exit and hit Enter when the process completes.

White List of Disk Partitioning Tools Recommend

After reading the above basic review information about the 7 disk partitioning tools and software, you may have a favored one in your mind.

Still, it doesn't matter if you haven't decided to pick the one. Here is a white list of top disk partitioning tools recommended by Qiling Editors, hope this can help you to make a decision:

To make your computing life easy and make use of disk space efficiently, it's worth you downloading and applying a powerful disk partitioning tool for help.

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