Good partition software

I have two drives. SSD which has my primary OS Windows 7, and i have a 500 GB drive that is just a place i have been putting my data.

I want to partition out the SATA 500 GB drive and put Windows 8 on it. I need a good disk parting software that is free, but I don't know which is best, or even some good names.

Help?

 

You could use Disk Managment in Windows 7 to partition and format the drive.

If you do not want to do that, then I would recommend Gparted Live CD because it allows you to align the partition to the MiB or cylinder. You need to partition Windows 8 to a 2048 sector offset or 1 MiB in order to have it aligned for the advanced format drives and SSD drives. Windows 7 always aligns to the MiB.

http://gparted.sourceforge.net/display-doc.php?name=help-manual#gparted-create-new-partition

 

I'll take a look. Thanks!

I initially turned to Disk Management. Right now though the only option I have is to shrink the volume. I'm afraid if I did that I might lose some info. Guess I should just backup to be sure and give it a whirl?

 

Yes, always backup before doing partition operations. I learned that the hard way.

 

Partitioned out just fine with Disk Management. No loss of data.