14 DAY TRIAL // EASEUS has made a name for itself especially through its hard disk partitioning products. The professional edition of Partition Master is a dedicated piece of software which combines a suite of options for organizing the hard disk into partitions or resizing and moving them on the disk.
There was a time when chopping up the HDD into multiple drives would be completed with the users keeping their fingers crossed. Plenty of accidents have been voiced in numerous comments on the Internet, most of which accusing data loss and faulty jobs.
Those days are long gone as technology nowadays does not even require a computer restart to finish a drive partitioning job. From the entire range of partitioning tools from EASEUS, Partition Master Professional is the cheapest for business users. It price is regularly set to $39.95, but it may drop during the holiday season.
At this moment, the license type and the price are among the few things that separate this version from the free edition, which can also be used on both 32-bit and 64-bit copies of Windows 7. Another difference between the two is the fact that the paid product offers you the chance to create a bootable disc with the program that allows its usage offline.
The interface of the latest EASEUS Partition Master Professional has not suffered any major changes and long time users will benefit from the same easy to use layout. The disk map is the central element, while the option list (wizards, partition and disk operations) runs down in the left hand side of the application panel. The toolbar in the upper part provides the most basic functions a user may need: resize/move, create a new partition, delete, format, copy and copy dynamic volume.
Compared to the last version we analyzed, the Partition Master of today comes enriched with a heft set of functions designed to affect both individual partitions as well as entire disks. Besides the functions any regular user may expect from such software, in this one you also have the possibility to view its content and explore its files and folders.
Starting a defragmentation session for any of the listed volumes is also available among the extra features sported by the application. Defrag procedure is carried out by the default solution included in Windows, Disk Defragmenter.
To offer you the possibility to conduct partitioning in the safest conditions possible, the developer puts at your disposal the means to copy any partition's contents to a new volume. This way you can proceed with down/upsizing with no fear of unwanted secondary effects. A wizard will guide you through the process so even the beginner user can carry out the task with no problems.
One of the best parts of Partition Master is that it provides various ways to manipulate a volume. You can try resizing a partition straight from the disk map or you can do it more accurately from the options in the context menu of each entry, by typing in the desired values yourself.
The flexibility of the software is not limited to just making a volume more or less roomy, but also to moving it on the actual hard disk. This translates into the possibility to change its position on the disk and decide whether you want unallocated space before or after its confinements. Users in need to make adjustments to a volume at the beginning of the hard drive with unallocated space at the end will definitely appreciate this functionality.
Among the advanced options of each drive you will find the “Hide” function. This will obscure an entire volume to any user accessing the machine. Of course, this invisibility cloak does not work when booting into different operating system.
Also for advanced users is converting a drive from logical to primary (available starting this version). The main difference between a primary partition and a logical one is that the former can be used to boot an operating system from.
As mentioned earlier in the article, the developer added the possibility to create a bootable disc. This is based on Linux and sports all the main features of the application. What you can't do is resize or move the system partition or handle RAID drives. Otherwise everything is pretty much the same. On the downside of this, you can create a bootable disc only if you use a CD or DVD, removable drives are not yet accepted.
Note: Although with previous versions you could create a bootable USB drive by following this tutorial, it looks like this is no longer possible with the latest version of the application.
One operation the disc comes in handy is recovery of volumes that were deleted or damaged on a basic MBR/GPT disk. A wizard steps in to help you complete the job. It features an automatic mode that searches for deleted volumes on its own, but you can switch it to manual if you want to specify the search method, the disks to scour or the volumes you want to recover.
The latest Partition Master Professional from EASEUS does an awesome job with minimum effort from the user. Although we did not run into trouble when chopping up a large partition with data on it into smaller portions, it is recommended to backup your data before proceeding. Partition Recovery tool revealed a few lost drives and we were able to retrieve data from them.
Version 6.5.1 of the software brings extended support for drives, and now includes removable storage devices. Support for Linux partition management (delete, create, format or recover EXT2/EXT3 drives) is on the list of improvements for this edition. All in all, although not too different from the free edition, EASUS Partition Master Professional makes for a great tool for professionals.
You won't benefit only from partitioning-related tools, but also instruments for checking volumes for errors, or defragmenting them. Resizing a volume and changing its location on the hard disk is an easy job that can be accomplished both by typing in the values yourself or by dragging by the items in the drive map.
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