AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition v8.5

AOMEI Partition Assistant SE is a free disk partitioning software program with all the basic partitioning tools you'd expect, along with some advanced functions you won't find everywhere.

Apart from the ability to copy, extend, resize, delete, and format partitions, one particularly interesting feature is the ability to create a bootable Windows PE OS that runs AOMEI Partition Assistant SE before Windows starts up.

There's much to like about Partition Assistant Standard Edition:

Pros:

• Very easy to use and understand interface
• Supports most common partitioning tasks
• Uses step-by-step wizards for quick task completion
• Is able to run before Windows starts
• Able to queue up lots of changes and then apply them at once
• Includes other useful drive tools

Cons:

• Unable to convert dynamic disks to basic disks
• Can't convert between primary and logical partitions
• Additional features are included only in the Pro version

• Can be used in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP
• A Windows PE bootable disc or USB device can be created with AOMEI Partition Assistant SE, and then used to manage partitions in the event that you can't start the operating system or if you want to avoid having to reboot after certain changes
• Everything you do in AOMEI Partition Assistant is queued and won't apply to the disks until you select Apply, after which all the operations will complete, one after the other in the order that you chose them
• Can extend the system partition without needing to reboot the computer
• Resizing a partition is very easy because you can either enter the values in manually to define the partition size or slide a button left or right to make it smaller or larger
• Two adjacent partitions can be merged into one with the easy using the Merge Partitions wizard
• A copy wizard lets you copy all the contents from one hard drive or partition, and put it on another; You're able to choose to copy just the data or to copy the whole drive/partition, sector by sector, including the free space
• You can also migrate the operating system to a different hard drive, which is the same thing as the copy function but requires a reboot
• All the partitions on a drive can be quickly removed with one click
• New partitions can have any of the following file systems set up: NTFS, FAT/FAT32, exFAT, EXT2/EXT3, or left unformatted
• A converter can change the file system to and from NTFS and FAT32 without erasing the data
• Includes a solid state drive (SSD) erase wizard so that you can set your SSD back to its factory default state
• Two partitions can be joined together as one without losing data
• Partitions can be hidden as well as split into two
• The MBR can be rebuilt from scratch
• An option lets AOMEI Partition Assistant SE shutdown the computer when all editing has completed
• The Partition Recovery Wizard can be used to attempt to restore lost or deleted partitions
• A disk surface test can see if there are any damaged sectors on the disk
• You're able to convert disks between MBR and GPT
• Supports changing the drive letter as well as the volume label
• Partitions and hard drives can be wiped clean to remove all the data
• Chkdsk can be run against any partition to attempt to repair errors

I've used several free partitioning tools, and I have to say that I really like AOMEI Partition Assistant SE. Not only is the interface well thought-out and easy to use, but it also has all the basic, and advanced, features anyone would expect...all for free.

One feature worth mentioning again is the Windows PE version of AOMEI Partition Assistant. With it, you setup partitions with ease even if you don't have an operating system installed. The program is the same as the one that runs in Windows but is instead launched from a disc or USB device, like a flash drive.

You can build this Windows PE disc from the "Make Bootable Media" wizard, which lets you burn directly to a disc or USB device, as well as export the program to an ISO file, which you can then use in a virtual machine or burn to a disc or burn to a USB device yourself.

Because there's also a professional version of AOMEI Partition Assistant, there are a handful of features that aren't available in this Standard Edition. Even so, there are still more useful tools in this free version than I've seen with other free disk partitioning programs.