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Is there any partition manager for Windows that can manage (resize, move, etc.) ext4 partitions?

Caveats:

  • Resize must be smart when resizing from the beginning of the partition.

    Many partition managers screw this up (I've noticed Acronis Disk Director 10 being an exception), and move the entire partition's data when you resize from the beginning, translating into enormous amounts of time wasted in many cases.

  • It must also be able to browse (copy/delete) files on partitions too.

I am specifically NOT asking for:

  • Offline-only solutions
  • Linux-based solutions

I think Acronis Disk Director 10 fit all of these solutions except that it doesn't have ext4 support. Something similar with ext4 support is just what I need.

Community
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user541686
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  • As of this writing apparently Paragon Partition Manager 11 Free performs a copy of *all* data when extending an NTFS partition from the front, while EaseUS and Minitools seem to only copy metadata (which is a lot faster). – user541686 Jan 14 '13 at 01:49
  • Warning: Minitool bundles Avast "anti"virus. Wasted way too much time trying to get rid of that malware. – unhammer Oct 07 '20 at 09:47

3 Answers3

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Paragon Partition Manager 11 Free Edition is Windows-based, supports ext4 and is very easy to use .

Although claiming a smart resize/move wizard, I have no idea how smart it is on moving ext4 from its beginning, but being one of the best partition managers around it is certainly worth a try.

Another one that you could try is MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition 6.0, boasting two million users world-wide.

Please note that when resizing partitions, nobody can guarantee the results. The world's best products are always capable of destroying the disk. I always counsel taking an image of a disk before doing any partition work (using a 3rd-party product - use the problematic Windows Backup only if you have to).

harrymc
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    Looking at their website, it seems like by "smart" they mean "secure", not "fast": `Paragon Smart Partition™ technology to securely perform partitioning operations`. :\ – user541686 Aug 21 '11 at 08:00
  • I have read this rather as "smart and secure", but I might be wrong. – harrymc Aug 21 '11 at 09:06
  • Paragon indeed seems to be much more powerful than other partition managers I've seen (Partition Magic, Acronis, Partition Wizard, etc.), but when resizing a 10-GiB ext4 partition from the beginning by a couple of megabytes, it still takes ~7 minutes to "Copy data by cluster..." (as the progress message says). The 7 minutes isn't a killer here, but if it does the same thing with my bigger, NTFS partitions (e.g. 200-GiB data partition) then it definitely will be. I'll try out NTFS soon and see how it goes -- I don't particularly care if it's only ext4 that's slow. – user541686 Aug 21 '11 at 17:42
  • Oh, also: it doesn't seem like it's capable of *browsing* ext4 partitions either, but if all else is well then I could probably live with that. – user541686 Aug 21 '11 at 17:46
  • Ugh, it still does a cluster-by-cluster copy for NTFS. This simply isn't going to scale. :( – user541686 Aug 21 '11 at 18:25
  • For the record, MiniTools Partition Wizard is telling me that my extended partition (and hence my logical partitions) **don't even exist**. I can't tell if this was because of something Paragon did or not (I don't remember seeing this before, and I've tried rebooting) but this is scaring me a little. (Other programs seem to work just fine, though.) – user541686 Aug 21 '11 at 18:56
  • BTW, Acronis Disk Director 11 is in the list of products that [support ext4](http://kb.acronis.com/content/6045). Why don't you get in touch with their Sales and ask if it really does or not ? – harrymc Aug 21 '11 at 18:58
  • I've downloaded it and tried it, but it doesn't recognize my Ubuntu ext4 partition. The page you linked to says that ext4 is only supported for *Backup and Recovery*, not for *Disk Director*. – user541686 Aug 21 '11 at 19:00
  • Slow resize might be unavoidable. See this [GParted question](https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gparted/+question/139135). – harrymc Aug 21 '11 at 19:25
  • It's certainly **not** unavoidable because Acronis can do it! There's nothing preventing it from happening -- you just have to create another file table that points to the data relative to the new start of the partition, then redirect everything to the new file table. Not that complicated, at least on NTFS. – user541686 Aug 21 '11 at 19:25
  • Ext4 support seems to be quite rudimentary at the moment, with many reports of destroyed file-systems (even for Linux gparted). Safe might be better than fast ? – harrymc Aug 21 '11 at 19:35
  • Right, I already said I don't care if ext4 partitioning slow. But what about NTFS? – user541686 Aug 21 '11 at 19:38
  • You might need to use 2 products to support these 2 disk formats. – harrymc Aug 21 '11 at 20:02
  • Paragon will not resize partitions without paying for the upgrade. They have a "smart" resize, but it will only resize between partitions of the same type. For instance, I wanted to shrink my Ext4 partitions so I could expand my NTFS partition to make more space for a Windows 10 installation. Not without paying for the upgrade. Many Linux tools are available for Windows, but I have yet to find a partitioning tool that has been ported to Windows. – thomassisson Dec 03 '15 at 03:56
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I am not too sure about editing it in Windows, but I would recommend using GParted's LiveCD/USB. Then you can just pop it in, edit what you need, then return without installing anything on your system.

Simon Sheehan
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  • I've had so many corruptions caused by Linux tools working on my partitions (even NTFS-3g, believe it or not) that I'm not looking for any Linux-based tools anymore, sorry. :( – user541686 May 20 '11 at 23:45
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    Even when NTFS support in Linux was "Highly experimental", I had no issues with Linux on a system with NTFS. If you are reluctant to let Linux touch your NTFS partitions, you can resize those in the Windows Disk Manager (diskmgmt.msc), then resize linux partitions with GParted – TuxRug May 21 '11 at 01:03
  • I have run full Linux systems on NTFS, and it causes no issues on my end. It really should not be doing anything to it if your not running a full system off it. I do not recommend using NTFS for any Linux stuff at all though. – Simon Sheehan May 21 '11 at 01:05
  • @TuxRug: I'm probably just scared, but I simply don't want Linux tools to touch *anything* related to my other partitions -- hence why I said Windows in the question. (That includes the partition table and stuff, so using GParted for ext4 won't work.) – user541686 May 21 '11 at 02:54
  • The important thing is to **back up your data**. I've never had gparted or ntfs3g mess up an NTFS partition. If you're really paranoid, make an image of your entire disk using `dd`. – Mechanical snail Aug 26 '11 at 05:17
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Paragon Hard Disk Manager 14 can resize/move Ext2, Ext3, Ext4 partition without damaging existing data.

Nospel
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  • Any comments regarding this comment? http://superuser.com/questions/286439/online-smart-partition-manager-with-full-ext4-support/859467#comment352534_325893 – user541686 Jan 02 '15 at 05:58