EASEUS Partition Manager Server 2.1

I recently had the opportunity to test drive Chengdu Yiwo Tech Developments' EASEUS Partition Manager Server 2.1.1 (EPMS). Using EPMS, you can easily create, format, and delete partitions on your hard disk. The most attractive feature is that it can resize/move your partitions by using your hard disk's free space without destroying data. The program's main functions allow you to easily:

• Resize/ Move partitions
• Create partitions
• Delete partitions
• Delete all partitions
• Label partitions
• Format partitions
• Check partitions
• Hide partitions
• Create a Bootable CD

EPMS has an impressive list of features:

• It works perfectly with hardware RAID.
• It can handle up to 32 hard disks, which makes it a good choice for server systems.
• Resize/Move system partition by simply clicking the system partition and sliding it through the unallocated space.
• The data on the system partition is completely untouched.
• Hide drives so they will not be visible (or accessible) from Windows even booted in Safe Mode.
• Create a bootable CD/DVD to manage partitions easier and faster.

Being a systems engineer, I have a lot of contact with servers. One of the biggest problems I run into is servers that were misconfigured with undersized system partitions that susequently got filled up with too many programs; this is where a partition manager is an essential tool.

I installed EPMS on my work laptop--the program works fine on XP--and put it through its paces. Within a couple of minutes, I had resized my C:\ partition to one-half of what it was. The program required me to reboot and when I arrived back at the desktop, my C:\ drive was fine and I had 57GB of unallocated space. Next, I hooked up a spare 120GB hard drive to my USB interface, plugged it in and ran EPMS. I deleted the existing partition and recreated a new one then formatted it. When you delete a partition, you're given the option to simply delete it or to delete it and destroy data. Choosing to delete and destroy data wipes all of the sectors on the drive. Every operation I tried went smoothly. The only glitch I experienced was when I tried to make a bootable CD on my laptop; I got an error message "Recorder scan fail!" The message said I had no recorder or one that is unsupported. The feature worked fine on another system with a generic CD writer, though, so this isn't a big issue.

The acid test was to try the program on a server running in production. I chose a Windows 2000 Server that is running as an application server. Installing EPMS was straightforward and no reboot was required. I launched the application and resized the D:\ partition, creating an unallocated section of about 14 GB. EPMS requested a reboot. When the server came back up, the EPMS batch file ran, carrying out the operation I requested; the server then rebooted again and came back up normally.

The program is easy to use and out-performs every other partition tool I've tried, both open source and commercial, earning EASEUS Partition Manager Server a "Superior Product" rating. It's well worth your money at $149.00. This is a tool that should be in every engineer's toolkit and one that I'm glad I have at my disposal.