Linux folks may know about a great piece of software called gParted, the Gnome Partition Editor. While booted into Linux, gParted works great for managing partitions on a hard drive. Windows users don’t have any good (read free) utilities like this, and the built-in Windows partition manager leaves much to be desired.

gParted Live is a CD image you can download that contains a minimal installation of what appears to be the Debian distribution. Once inside the Live CD, you are free to operate on any partition for any hard drive, since none of them are mounted. I haven’t found anything that this little CD can’t do in terms of partitioning. It would make a great utility to have in a Sys Admin’s toolkit.

You can get the gParted Live CD here. There’s also a package for booting from a USB drive.