Partitioning Program?

[Azkarin2]

Anybody have any tips for a good partitioning program? The one provided by Vista seems to suck so I was looking for a free one or torrentable one. Anybody have any tips? Thanks.

[Raineer]

What are you trying to do? Believe it or not, using GParted which comes with most Linux "Live CD's" is an excellent partitioning program and it runs outside of Windows which is like a double-bonus.

The only rub could be if you need to manage partitions which all run inside Vista, I'm not sure it will play nice with whatever bootloader Vista uses (grub/lilo, don't remember)

[Azkarin2]

My laptop came with 64 bit Vista and I was able to use the partitioning program that came loaded to make a 20GB partition. I put 32 bit Vista on for school program purposes. The 64 bit Vista has 260GB dedicated to it and I'l like to take a sizeable portion (150GB) and create a third partition to save the majority of my stuff (pictures, videos, music) to. Now my brother is a real champ at this but we go to different colleges so he just gives me tips/advice. He mentioned PartitionMagic but it doesn't support Vista.

I guess before I head down this path, does this sound like a solid legit idea? If so, what program would be best to help me set up my comp this way? I'd prefer to run out of 32bit full time due to issues with PeerGuardian and other programs if that matters at all. I regret immensely choosing 64 bit Vista!

[Raineer]

If I were in your shoes, I would probably backup what you need and wipe the whole thing and reinstall Vista 32 over the top of it. I doubt you are making much use of the "64-bit-ness", unless it came with 4GB of RAM (which in that case, dropping to 32-bit drops you to like 3.2G of usable RAM).
What you are trying to do isn't impossible, it just doesn't sound like it's worth the work. PartitionMagic was also my favorite if I really had to work friendly with Windows, but I didn't know Vista is unsupported. Due to the way Vista uses it's bootloader I think you will have to use a Vista-Compatible one, pirated or otherwise, and I'm not sure what to recommend.

[Cephius]

Can't you just shrink the volume, then create a new partition out of the unallocated space using gparted? It's pretty easy if you do it that way, you can even shrink the partition from inside Windows.

[toonces]

Paragon Partition Manager is good with Vista64 and 32, if you want a GUI friendly program.

[Norellicus]

Partition Logic is another free one

[Okan]

Instead of partitions, I'd highly recommend an external drive. They're getting larger and cheaper, will allow you to move freely between different computers, and will be at less risk of corruption than a single drive partitioned three times.

[Spekkio]

actually if you want to be really cheap and don't feel like mucking about w/ partitions or bootloaders you could just get a 25 dollar 8 gig SD card and load windows on that. boot from that and you're good to rock and roll.