Most users are satisfied with the hard drive utilities that ship with Windows--especially the more powerful partitioning and defragging tools found in Windows Vista and 7. Since you're reading this, though, you're obviously not a 'most' type of user. Here are our ten favorite free utilities for partitioning, monitoring, and optimizing hard drives (as well as a few inexpensive for-pay alternatives). Despite offering some high-end features, these downloadable programs won't bust your budget.
Best Mac Hard Drive Reader For Windows
(For links to all of the downloads in one convenient list, see our.) Partitioning Microsoft's --included for free on each Vista or Windows 7 installation disc--is a perfectly viable tool for, but only if you're in a command-line kind of mood. The vast majority of the time, I want something fast and graphical that supports all file systems. Of all the partition utilities I've reviewed, (now in version 6) remains my top pick--not only because it has the free Gnome partition tool (GParted), but also because it has. I'd say that I encounter about one memory problem for every three hard drive problems, so it's nice to have that memory-diagnostic tool around. If you don't need memory testing, or if you just want an alternative Linux partitioning boot disc, is a slightly lighter-weight boot disc that also supports booting from a USB flash drive or an external hard drive. You need to visit the command prompt twice during the boot process, but I have on occasion found that GParted Live boots when the Parted Magic disc will not--and vice versa. Offering an extremely small footprint and very quick boots, seems to work fine, at least with internal IDE drives.