

Align all partitions or align a specified partition to optimize hard drive performance.FULLY Support 4096-byte-sector-based hard drive.Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful yet free partition manager to manage their hard disk.įunctions include: Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Extend Partition, Split Partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition, Partition Recovery. Besides, there are definitely better free options available, including Aomei Backupper Standard and Hasleo Backup Suite Free, which are both superior to MiniTool ShadowMaker.MiniTool Partition Wizard Free is a free partition manager software for Windows. I don’t have a spare test machine available right now and, based on what I’d read, I certainly didn’t want to trust trying it out on one of my main machines. Now, admittedly these user reviews are fairly old and, like fine wine, software does generally tend to improve with age, but I could not find even a single positive review for this software, and the preponderance of negative reviews does not exactly inspire confidence:Īs I mentioned earlier, I didn’t get around to fully testing the software. I’ve been a fan of MiniTool’s software in the past, having used the once-available free bootable partition manager, but it’s pretty sneaky of MiniTool not to clarify exactly what is missing in the free edition. Message to MiniTool: If you’re going to provide a feature comparison chart, make it a FULL feature comparison chart and not one that is designed to obfuscate any limitations. Below is a screenshot of the feature comparison chart provided by MiniTool ~ The user only discovers this limitation when they try to create these types of backups and are then informed via a popup message that these options are only available in the Pro edition. This is a pretty serious limitation and one that is not publicized by MiniTool. However, the one notable omission is that the free edition does not support creating differential and/or incremental backups. Automatic compression (set to medium by default).Create WinPE-based bootable recovery media.Cloning basic and dynamic disks (Simple Volume).Creating and restoring file/data backups.Creating and restoring both system and disk backups.MiniTool ShadowMaker Free edition comes with a good set of basic features, including: I must stress from the outset that, due to reasons that will become apparent, this is not a full review but rather an overview. In light of the recent announcement that Paramount Software is discontinuing the popular free edition of its Macrium Reflect image backup software, I decided to take a look at MiniTool ShadowMaker Free as an alternative.
