Partition Wizard now includes [free] bootable CD

Back in August I wrote an article about Partition Wizard, one of the only free partition management software which supports 64-bit users and businesses. In my article I stated the only major caveat I noticed with Partition Wizard is the lack of a bootable CD. MT Solution seems to have taken heed to what I wrote because they just released a bootable CD, which users can download for free, for Partition Wizard!

For those that don’t know, what a bootable CD does is it literally puts Partition Wizard onto a CD (and/or DVD depending on what you burn it to). So whenever you put in the CD and reboot your computer, you can run Partition Wizard from the disk (your BIOS must support booting from CD; the newer computers will be able to do this automatically but the older computers may need their settings changed in the BIOS) without ever booting into Windows. The advantage of this feature is if you are unable to boot into your Windows for any reason, you can still manage your partitions; for example you could resize your defunct Windows partition to make room for a different OS.

That being said, Partition Wizard Bootable CD gives you all the features of Windows based non-bootable CD version of Partition Wizard…

Resize/Move partitions

Create partitions

Delete partitions

Change Partition Label

Delete all partitions

Format partitions

Convert file system

Explore Partition

Check Partitions

Partition Recovery

Wipe disk

Wipe partition

Copy partition

Copy disks

Initialize to MBR disk

Initialize to GPT disk

…with only two technical limitations:

You cannot, and should not, use Partition Wizard Bootable CD to create/delete partition before system partition under Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003. In other words, when you are looking at your partition/hard drive list in Partition Wizard while running the bootable CD, do delete any of the existing partitions listed above your main system partition and do not create any new partitions above it. If you want to be able to create/delete partitions before your system partition, you will need to download and use the Windows based non-bootable CD version of Partition Wizard.

Do not use Partition Wizard Bootable CD to move system partition under Windows Vista, Windows 2008 and Windows 7. If Vista/2008/Win7 users want to be able to move the system partition for, you will need to download and use the Windows based non-bootable CD version of Partition Wizard.

Another good thing MT Solution did, in my opinion, is make this bootable CD a completely separate download from the main Windows based non-bootable CD version of Partition Wizard. I say this is a good thing because bootable CD downloads are usually much larger in size than their installer version counterparts. Therefore since Partition Wizard’s bootable CD is a separate 34 MB download, the installer version still retains it small file size download (less than 6 MB). This makes it easier for people with slow/limited connections to grab the Windows based non-bootable CD version of Partition Wizard without having to download an extra “bootable CD” with it if they will never use it.

You may download Partition Wizard Bootable CD from the following link: