Gnome Partition Editor

© Gnome Partition Editor

Introduction

The Gnome Partition Editor (a.k.a. GParted) is free, open source, software using the General Public License that allows one to manage partitions on a hard drive. I ended up using this software recently to fix some issues on my brother’s computer and thought I’d share some experiences.

Getting Started

The best way to get started is to click on the Downloads page and download the latest version of the Live CD ISO image. Once downloaded, simply burn the ISO to a CDROM disk and you are set.

Using GParted

Place the newly created GParted CD in your CDROM drive and reboot the computer (assuming you have set your CDROM as a bootable device in your BIOS). As GParted is loading, you will see a bunch of status messages eventually presenting you with a boot screen. While at this screen you can choose GParted to autoload the correct video settings for your machine (which might or might not work). In my case, I picked the first choice and then followed the on screen prompts for picking my video driver, keyboard, and language. You might have to experiment with picking the right option before you get it right. In my case, I eventually ended up using the “VESA” option which worked fine.

Once GParted is loaded, you get a nice graphical interface where you can delete, resize, and create new partitions on your hard drive. From this point, it is fairly self explanatory as to what you can and can not do. It looks like GParted supports the major operating systems such as Windows, Linux, etc. In my case, I was formatting my new partitions for NTFS.

Once you are done modifying your disk partitions, you can click on the red exit button and reboot your machine.

Caveats, Tips, and Tricks

• Partition Labels - Unfortunately, GParted does not allow you to label each partition that is created. You can only fix this once you have the operating system loaded.
• Number of Partitions - I was only able to create three partitions. Not sure if this was a Windows XP NTFS issue or not. I was also restoring my computer from a Ghost image so maybe that was the culprit.
• Partition Sizes - Should you have issues booting into Windows with a large, newly created, partition (say 60GB or more), you might want to create it as a smaller partition and then resize it, otherwise Windows will blue screen. Not sure if this is a Windows bug or a bug with GParted partition creation.

Parting Thoughts

I think the software has a few flaws but is handy to have around. In the past, I have used Partition Magic but if you are looking for something free, then this might be a good choice for you.

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