What I like about Paragon is that the each function in the software has its own wizard. It’s four basic functions: backup and recovery, partition manager, disk wiper and drive copy. Paragon Partition Manager free is another great little utility that supports Windows 10 and has a lot of features. You can use it to extend your system partition, migrate your OS from a standard HDD to a SSD, convert file system, and lots more. It supports Windows 10, just about all file system formats, UEFI and EFI boot, MBR and GPT disks, RAID storage, and SSDs.

The interface is quite straightforward and the software is excellent at making complex formatting options simple. MiniTool Partition Wizard Free is a freeware disk partitioning and formatting utility that is simple to use and effective.

If you need to perform some more advanced tasks like convert the partition or clone it, you’ll have to upgrade to the paid version. You can resize or move partitions, merge partitions, check partitions, wipe partitions, format partitions and change the label. If you need to manage partitions, copy partitions or even create boot disks, EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition is an excellent utility that can handle all of that and more.Ĭurrently one of the highest ranked hard drive utilities on many websites, this lightweight Windows app is a bit more intuitive than the built-in Windows Disk Management function, offering several additional options and features. In many cases, these utilities are often more effective than the built-in options that Windows and OS X offer as well. In those cases where a hard drive is simply not formatting, partitioning, etc., you may want to consider using a specialty hard drive formatting utility, which will often times make things simpler. If this is happening, this guide may be useful. If you’re comfortable using command line, then you may want to check out our guide on how to format external hard drives to FAT32.Īdditionally, your computer may not recognize the external hard drive whatsoever.

If you are unable to get a hard drive formatted or partitioned correctly using the built-in apps that are offered by Microsoft and Apple, then your next step may be to try and format the drive directly, using command line.

Format for windows and mac disk utility