MiniTool Partition Wizard Review - Free and Intuitive Partition Manager for Beginners

excellent
key review info
application features
  • Partition manager
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Tinkering with a hard disk's layout is not just a task designed for experienced users, thanks to software applications like MiniTool Partition Wizard. It contains simple buttons and wizards that deliver straightforward solutions for managing disk partitions, whether you want to create new ones, delete them, migrate the entire operating system to another location, or something else.

The installation operation is a fast and simple task that shouldn't pose any difficulties. As for the interface, MiniTool adopts a comfortable look and neatly organized structure. It shows all partitions at startup and lets you examine their total, used and unused capacity, filesystem, type (primary or logical), and status (e.g. active and boot, system).

Geared toward inexperienced users, the utility has a few wizards lined up to help you migrate the operating system to an HDD or SDD in secure conditions, copy partitions or the entire disk, as well as to recover partitions.

Migrate the OS, copy the full disk, copy or recover partitions

When it comes to OS migration, the destination can even be a USB flash drive, provided that its storage capacity is large enough for the whole operating system. Before proceeding any further, you should know that any files available on the output disk will be deleted by MiniTool to make room for Windows. As far as the disk layout is concerned, it's possible to fit the partitions to the entire disk, copy them while skipping the resizing part, or to edit the partitions on the destination disk.

The disk copying procedure isn't that different from OS migration, since you can select the source and output, and choose whether you want to fit the partitions to the whole disk, skip the resizing, or edit the partitions on the destination.

For partition copy operations, you can select the source and output location (unallocated space), as well as enter the new partition size by either adjusting the new dimension or free space remaining. It can be created either as a primary or logical drive.

The partition recovery wizard aids you in identifying and retrieving lost or deleted partitions. It lets you pick the disk you want to scan and the scan rage: the entire disk, free space only, or specified sectors only. The quick scan mode restores continuous partitions, while the full scan mode verifies every sector in the scan range. The second option takes the longest time to finish and should be chosen if the quick scan fails.

Other partition operations

To destroy all containing data, partitions can be formatted after establishing the new label, filesystem (FAT32, NTFS, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, Linux Swap) and cluster size. What's more, you can convert NTFS partitions to FAT or vice versa, along with MBR disks to GPT or vice versa.

It's also possible to delete partitions, create new ones in unallocated space, move or resize them by setting the new dimension or remaining free space, split a partition in two parts by specifying the original or new size, align it to improve disk performance, hide it from display, as well as edit drive letters. Furthermore, MiniTool lets you make partitions logical, primary, active or inactive, change a partition's serial number and type ID, or perform a surface test to check the partition for errors.

MiniTool Partition Wizard: Restructure your hard disks layout
MiniTool Partition Wizard: Restructure your hard disks layout

Partitions may also be wiped to remove all sectors of data and prevent applications from recovering it. There are several wiping methods put at your disposal, depending on your preferred security level and time willing to spend waiting for the task to finish: fill sectors with ones or zeros (quick), fill sectors with ones and zeros (slow), shred information through 3 or 7 passes (very slow).

Review all operations in the pending queue

An important aspect worth mentioning is that the operations are not immediately performed. Instead, they are added to a pending queue where you can review their details and ask the program to execute all of them sequentially, therefore giving you the possibility to leave the PC unattended while it's dealing with time-consuming tasks (since it's highly recommended to postpone any computer activity while an application is tinkering with the hard disk's structure).

Before committing all changes in the pending queue, you can undo operations if you change your mind, or discard everything to start again from scratch. We've encountered this feature before in AOMEI Partition Assistant and EASEUS Partition Master.


The Good

The tool lets you reorganize your hard disk by creating, copying, deleting, splitting, moving, resizing and wiping partitions. You can change their labels, align partitions, perform surface tests and check the file system for errors, migrate the operating system to an HDD or SSD, copy the entire disk to a new location, as well as identify and recover lost or deleted partitions.

It's also possible to convert NTFS partitions to FAT or vice versa, along with MBR disks to GPT or vice versa.

You can set partitions as logical, primary, active or inactive.

It shows disk maps to let you explore partition sizes easily through graphical representations.

Operations are not immediately carried out. Instead, they are added to a pending queue that you can review, undo operation, or discard everything.

The app worked smoothly on Windows 8.1 Pro during our evaluation, without triggering the operating system to hang, crash or prompt error dialogs. OS compatibility extends to older Windows, including XP.

It includes a help file with screenshots and tutorials.

This edition is free to use.

You can also download a bootable ISO version of MiniTool Partition Wizard that can be burned to a CD.

The Bad

Some partition operations listed in the main app window are not actually available in the free edition of MiniTool Partition Wizard (e.g. merging partitions, modifying cluster sizes), so they are just eye-candy to get you to purchase more feature-rich versions.

The Truth

To conclude, the free version of MiniTool Partition Wizard contains intuitive and simple-to-understand options not only for power users, but also for beginners.

For additional features, you can check out MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional, MiniTool Partition Wizard Server Edition, MiniTool Partition Wizard Enterprise Edition or MiniTool Partition Wizard Technician Edition.

user interface 4
features 4
ease of use 5
pricing / value 5


final rating 5
Editor's review
excellent
 
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MiniTool Partition Wizard (17 Images)

MiniTool Partition Wizard: Restructure your hard disks layoutMiniTool Partition Wizard: Migrate the OS to SSD or HDDMiniTool Partition Wizard: Copy partitions to other locations using a wizardMiniTool Partition Wizard: Enter the new partition size or remaining free space when copying partitionsMiniTool Partition Wizard: Copy the entire disk to another location using a wizard
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