A plucky little piece of freeware that packs a subtle punch, EASEUS Partition Manager partitions hard drives like a reigning champ. Loaded with features, EPM runs smoothly and lacks only a glitzy interface. And we recommend it unequivocally for partitioning tasks.

There are now quite a few on the market - and of course you can create and delete partitions using XP's and Vista's limited disk management utilities. But there's always room for a best of breed, and although Easeus Partition Manager Professional doesn't quite achieve this, it comes close and has the potential to get there.

The Microsoft Management Console MMC Disk Management snap-in comes with Server 2008. Another option is EASEUS Partition Manager 3.0 Server Edition. I've tested Partition Manager and it allows a lot of flexibility in resizing and moving partitions.

Easeus' Partition Manager 3.0 Server Edition is an easy to use partition tool which can also be used on desktop systems. Launched on 28 November, version 3.0 now supports disks up to 1.5TB, and includes support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2008.

One extremely important feature of the application is that it can resize partitions even if they are populated with data, without creating any problems and keeping the files intact. You can resize drives (shrink or enlarge) according to the unallocated space available near them.