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I've been looking for a disk management suite for a while and come across mentions of GParted, but that's for Linux. I"d like to know if there are any comparable GUI-based products on Windows.

In Windows, it seems that you have to use the command line and diskpart because the disk management tool in Computer Management locks you out of certain functions, and then obviously lacks certain advanced functions. 95% of the time, disk management is enough of a tool, but if I'm playing around with Linux/Raspbian images on SD cards, it comes up lacking due to a few idiosyncrasies of the tool.

Are there any tools out there that might be comparable to GParted, but for Windows?

Must-have features:

  • Intuitive GUI
  • Must be a program (i.e. not a liveCD)
  • Developer must have a good reputation (I'm trusting them with my disks/media)
  • CRUD partitions
  • CRUD volumes
  • Must work on fixed and removable media
  • Can delete all partitions on a drive/flash media (i.e. the 0 partition of an SD card)
  • Can create a new partition in unallocated space (i.e. in an SD card) (Windows has a hard time doing this with some SD cards or an SD card that has been imaged for Linux/Raspbian)

Nice-to-have features:

  • Free
  • Open Source software
  • Resizing partitions
  • Read/write to EXT-based file systems in Windows
  • Data recovery
  • Secure wipe
  • MBR and GPT support
  • Disk imaging (read/write)

I have come across Easus but that just seems shady for some reason, and I can't shake my feeling that it's shady.

The reason I'm looking for software like this is that I'm still trying to get the hang of Linux, and much more comfortable in Windows and want to get stuff done, not fight everything all the time and burn out my energy trying to figure out all of this in Linux to fix the problems I'm having in Linux.

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  • Easus has a reputation for being shady cause they apparently have folks trying to spam sites. Its a pity since it works pretty well, but I can't recommend it cause of their marketing tactics.
    – Journeyman Geek
    Commented May 6, 2016 at 23:55
  • Have you tried Paragon Backup Manager or Paragon Partition Manager?
    – onurcano
    Commented Feb 2, 2017 at 11:01
  • 1
    Partitioning Removal Media: Windows will never be able to create more than one partition on a USB drive or SD card, as Windows has never natively supported this (I forget the reasoning). For multiple partitions, one should either utilize a BSD/Linux live boot/VM, or utilize Cygwin to either install a disk partitioning program or to compile your program of choice. R/W to ext2/3/4: Paragon's Linux FS for Windows would be recommended. (Partitions must still be unmounted in Windows prior to removal)
    – JW0914
    Commented Apr 3, 2018 at 14:41
  • 1
    @JW0914 An actual answer on how to use Cygwin to access partitions in windows would be priceless. AFAIK you can't simply install gparted in it.
    – Dmitry Grigoryev
    Commented Jul 5, 2021 at 16:05
  • Can create a new partition in unallocated space (i.e. in an SD card) (Windows has a hard time doing this with some SD cards or an SD card that has been imaged for Linux/Raspbian) that's because Linux uses hybrid ISO which messes up the partition table in the MBR
    – phuclv
    Commented Jul 31, 2022 at 4:20

5 Answers 5

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Your question got me on another search, and I think I found a better match than my go-to-answer-of-past-years.

Check out DiskGenius, based on the comparison chart it looks like it's the best freemium offer out there.

A great plus for me, it's part of the scoop installer's extras bucket.

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Update: see my other answer, I think that's a better choice.

AOMEI Tech's Partition Assistant

Not open-source, but free (actually freemium). Highly reputable.

However, my experience with it is based on SATA disk drives, I did not test it on USB keys or SD Cards, so this might not be the correct answer.

Hope it works our for you though.

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Acronis has many great tools, and one of them is Acronis Disk Director. It's neither free nor open source but it supports browsing partition data and scanning the disk for recovering lost partitions, and it can even operate on locked volumes like the Windows partition without the need of a separate boot disk by doing that in the pre-boot Windows PE environment

Acronis Disk Director interface

Another thing is that it's extremely fast. In fact I've used so many partitioning tools for decades and gparted is the worst. It's extremely slow and fragile. Even moving a 1TB partition for a few GB requires moving the whole 1TB of data, whereas other smarter tools just move the few GBs of overlapping data, reducing the risk of data loss. Besides gparted only shows one disk at a time and switching disk requires rescanning which isn't quite intuitive and fast

However it's been a while since the last time I used it so I can't give more information. Please see https://www.acronis.com/en-us/support/more/diskdirector/12.5 for details

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Try Macrorit Partition Expert

Macrorit Partition Expert screenshot

EaseUS Partition Master is another suggestion. It can do every basic partitioning operations including split/merge partitions and do it very well

However one thing I dislike about it is that it usually compares itself to other tools, for example EaseUS Partition Master vs. Acronis Disk Director, Differences and Similarities [2022 New]

But the tool that has the highest reputation IMHO is cgdisk from Rod Smith who's the famous author of various books regarding partitioning. You can see him on superuser and askubuntu

It's not a GUI but TUI, so not CLI and may be intuitive for anyone comfortable enough with partitioning. It's open source and has a Windows version. It also supports various other disk formats that others don't even know like BSD disklabel or APM

cgdisk screenshot

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Try the Minitool Partition Wizard

https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

But it does not provide some of your nice to have features

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