All computer hard disks are arranged into partitions to make allocating space easier. For most people one disk equals one partition, but if your disks are particularly large or small it can be worth organising them more effectively.

Partition management is one of those things that need to be done flawlessly when reorganising a computer, adding a new hard disk or upgrading the operating system. Considering people may do that once a year or less, the £14 asking price of Partition Manager 9 Personal would be high if it didn't do its complex job in a way that’s understandable to home users.

Paragon has introduced a number of extra wizards to handle tasks that might otherwise lead to costly mistakes and encourages the user at every point to make sure their hard disk is backed up. This isn’t completely altruistic behaviour – a trial copy of the company's other software, Drive Backup, is included with Partition Manager 9.

The things you might want to do with a partition manager include splitting a partition into two to better manage available space, reallocating space between two or more existing partitions, or merging partitions to make one large space on a disk.

Partition Manager 9 can do all these things and do most of them from within Windows. A recovery CD is also supplied, and when you start the computer with this in the drive it loads Paragon’s own operating system for the few tasks that can’t be achieved from inside Windows. The new version of the program works under newer 64-bit versions of Vista as well as 32-bit ones, something previous versions didn’t.

Also new to the program is the Install New Operating System Wizard, which prepares a disk for a new operating system and ties in with the supplied boot manager so you can run several operating systems and start up into any of them easily. That's handy for those wanting to try Vista but keep their Windows XP installation. Most operations performed on partitions can be undone, too.

Vista compatibility: Yes