Go out and buy a new computer and the first thing you’ll want to do is install your favourite software, move across your media files and restore other data from your old computer. Snag is, the new drive will be partitioned in a manner that will differ from your requirements. It’s likely to ship as one large partition or in a number of smaller partitions that the manufacturer thought was wise for their users.

For this reason, you need to work out the partitions you require and re-partition your drive so that you have a system designed for your requirements: a system partition, a partition for your media files, another for games, and so on.

Look for a Windows app and you may find you’re spending a long time looking for that elusive partition manager. It’s not so straightforward if all you want to do is delete a couple of existing partitions or extended another.

Step up Paragon Partition Manager 9 Express. This basic but functional partitioning tool will handle most of your requirements. You can create a new partition, delete an existing partition or simply extend the size of a small partition. That’s about the limit of its functionality, but it’s fine for most home users. If you want more, look at the Personal edition which enables you to merge partitions and make a basic partitions backup.

Note that this free version is not Vista 64-bit compatible.