It seems like ages ago that we took a look at the state of drive partition manipulation software and in the intervening years… not much has changed. This is not all that surprising as storage technology may have advanced from spindle & platter to NAND but the underlying ideas on how a partition(s) are configured has not changed all that much. With that being said Microsoft still has done very little to fix the clunky, kludge, and downright data unsafe methods they expect you to use when doing even basic partition related tasks. This is where companies like MiniTool and their Partition Wizard version 11 software come into play.
Much like most companies, MiniTool’s Partition Wizard comes in a few different formats. The first is the ‘free’ (aka shareware/freeware) edition, then the $39/$59 ‘Pro’ version (depending on if you want a one-time purchase or free lifetime upgrades), then there ‘Pro Ultimate’ edition. Today we will be looking at the free and Pro versions to see if they still work as well as they did before (when we tested v8), what has changed, and if the paid version is right for you. With an asking price starting at only $39 USD the paid version certainly seems like a good idea, but maybe the ‘free’ version is ‘good enough’ for your needs. So, without further preamble lets take both for a spin and see what the new v11 has to offer.
