Comments on: Best Free Partition Manager – 2025

By: Jim Hillier

Jim Hillier — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 06:37:00 +0000

In reply to Ken Wolf. That's a very unusual limitation. the advertising is very misleading That seems to be the case with a lot of these freebies Ken.

By: Ken Wolf

Ken Wolf — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 03:07:25 +0000

The drive in the usb enclosure was larger. The problem is the drive that I want to clone to is in a usb enclosure. Hasleo will not do that. Try it and see.
It will clone if both drives are internal, but that isn’t possible with most laptops, which makes the “feature” of system cloning useless for laptop users wanting to upgrade their system drive via cloning. Hasleo does not mention this in any of their directions or advertising.
When contacted about this, they basically said they wanted me to buy the pro version of their cloning software.
They make really good products, but the advertising is very misleading.
Just my two cents….

By: Jim Hillier

Jim Hillier — Sun, 07 Sep 2025 02:59:26 +0000

In reply to Kenneth S Wolf. As is the case with quite a few of these free system cloning options, they will only clone to a larger capacity drive. Is the drive you're trying to clone to (the destination drive) smaller or larger capacity than the original (source)? The only options for a laptop are, as you say, either an enclosure or a USB adapter.

By: Kenneth S Wolf

Kenneth S Wolf — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 23:42:41 +0000

I’m using Hasleo for my backups and I’ve tried to clone a drive to another ssd in a usb enclosure, but the software won’t do it, so that feature is worthless. They want you to buy their cloning software
How else can you clone one drive to another in a laptop unless you use some kind of enclosure?

By: Jim Hillier

Jim Hillier — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 23:06:08 +0000

In reply to Ken Wolf.

Hey Ken,
I don’t know of any free stand-alone cloning software, but here are 3 free options that include a system cloning feature:

Hasleo Backup Suite Free is a full-featured free backup software that also includes a system cloning feature: https://www.easyuefi.com/backup-software/backup-suite-free.html

Here is a full review of Hasleo Backup Suite Free in 3 parts: https://davescomputertips.com/hasleo-backup-suite-review-part-1/

DiskGenius is a free full-featured partition manager that claims to include a system cloning feature: https://www.diskgenius.com/

MultiDrive is a completely free software that also includes a system cloning feature: https://multidrive.io/

Of the three, I would recommend Hasleo Backup Suite Free. I have no experience at all with the other two.

By: Ken Wolf

Ken Wolf — Sat, 06 Sep 2025 16:57:30 +0000

I want to follow up on something you brought up in this post; you mentioned system disk cloning. Do you know of any free system disk cloning software? I know of Clonezilla, but it is pretty user-unfriendly. A lot of the free backup software have cloning features, but not of the system disk. Thanks for any suggestions!

By: Jim Hillier

Jim Hillier — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 01:10:35 +0000

In reply to dan. Hey Dan, Yes, as Reg mentioned in a comment above, it's not the sort of software one needs to use very often.

By: dan

dan — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 22:28:34 +0000

In reply to Jim Hillier.

Hi Jim,
So far DiskGenius hasn’t bitten me, but I haven’t used it very much, so I’ll keep a wary eye open. Thanks for the tip.
Also, I’ll keep Paragon in mind should I need features not offered by DiskGenius (or other managers of that ilk).
As always, thanks for your insights,
Dan

By: Jim Hillier

Jim Hillier — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 00:10:53 +0000

In reply to dan.

Hey Dan,

DiskGenius does not enjoy a good reputation. Users have complained that when they’ve tried to access some advanced features in the free version they receive a message that payment is required. It’s a sneaky tactic and one which I’ve come across all too often. Software vendors list features in their free versions and then when the user tries to access those features they receive a message that it’s only available in the Pro version.

Also, multiple users who have purchased the Pro version have complained that, when the software hasn’t worked for them, they’ve been refused a refund under the terms of the 30-day money back guarantee.

I haven’t had any firsthand experience with DiskGenius myself Dan but, based on user feedback alone, I’d find it difficult to recommend.

I totally disagree that Paragon ‘offers very little’. During my testing it was easily the most full-featured of the free partition managers.

By: dan

dan — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 19:20:51 +0000

It appears as if Paragon Partition Manager is taking up ~450MB and offers very little.

I encourage you to check out Disk Genius which is ~70MB and seems to offer much more.

By: Reg Watson

Reg Watson — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 20:24:07 +0000

Thanks Jim – I must admit even though I have the lifetime paid Pro version of the of EaseUS I rarely use it these days. I usually fire it up when I buy a new disk and just want to give it a few thorough checks before installing Windows on it. I Nostalgically I do miss defragmenting drives now and being mesmerised by the sight of all those coloured blocks flashing around the screen that is now redundant with today’s modern SSD’s.

Still off topic (!) what I do like that is actually built into Windows and accessed through the command line interface is DIskPart and it’s “clean” command. I have found that very powerful for recovering disks including USB disks that are no longer recognised under Windows for whatever reason – as long you are careful to ensure you carefully identify the correct disk first ! As an example I almost returned a disk under warranty not long ago when my NAS drive reported a fatal disk error formatting a new disk. Using the DiskPart Clean command I got rid of all the Windows formatting on the drive which had clearly upset the NAS operating system setup – it was perfectly happy to format in the Synology O/S after that.

Cheers
Reg