#2: "Without doubt there will be someone complaining that using this companies partitioning program destroyed their computer, this happens with all petitioning programs,"
FWIW & IMHO & all that...
Whenever you have software with the potential to trash a Windows install, there are going to be some folks complaining that it did just that, ruined things so they had to start from scratch, re-installing Windows & whatever software they could manage [by that I mean they lose most of the GOTD offers they had installed]. It happens with registry cleaners & backup apps & partition software etc.
I think there are so many different possible hardware combos, plus less common ways of setting up some of those systems, plus this huge variety of software, & mal-ware + semi-mal-ware, that it's practically impossible for companies to test their software on everything to look for incompatibilities. Add potential incompatibilities to users being inexperienced with that software &/or user error, & sometimes **** happens.
Usually restoring a backup can put things right, except loads of people don't back up, & out of those that do, many [perhaps even most?] have never restored a backup until disaster strikes -- some of them will then find that they can't restore their backup. Maybe it's some incompatibility, maybe it's because the external drive where they've stored their backups fails -- maybe it fails under the sustained data transfer, or maybe because it won't work with their system outside of Windows, i.e. from a boot disc or USB stick. Lots of people use USB sticks rather than burn a rescue disc, not realizing or knowing that booting from a USB stick depends on the make/model of USB stick & the individual system they want to boot -- mileage can vary a lot.
At any rate, I think that as possible people should have more than one way out of trouble, should as possible do a run through of whatever task to make sure they understand the software & procedures, and should [again as possible] test the backup &/or partitioning, &/or registry cleaning software they plan to use in case there are problems. Otherwise, if you haven't tested these sorts of software out, you're making a total leap of faith.
Usually when I read comments that software X or Y trashed my system so I lost Windows + all my software, I don't read that it cost them half an hour to restore a backup & put things back as they were. That's the way it should work if/when you have problems.
That all said, software like EaseUS Partition Master is actually pretty safe, as is Paragon's, as is Aomei's etc., provided you learn the very basics regarding partitions, so you understand what you're doing, & provided you don't ask them to do something you maybe shouldn't. You should always have a disk/partition image backup before you work with partitions, and you should have already made sure you know how to restore a backup, & that everything about restoring that backup works for you with your hardware.
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A partition is an allocation of however much of the storage space on a hard drive, regular or hybrid or SSD. If/when you have a blank disk, it's much like setting dividers in a kitchen drawer you'll use for flatware or utensils. Once you have data in a partition, if the partition's not completely filled, you can make that partition smaller -- you 1st make sure everything is packed toward the beginning of the partition & then trim its size by eliminating some of the unused free space. Maybe think of it as moving all the spoons to one side so you can move that drawer divider, making the area for spoons smaller, giving you more room for whatever you want to put next to them.
If you want to make a partition larger, you move that same boundary outwards -- rather than moving the drawer divider to give you less room, you move it the other way to give you more. That's only a problem if there's something there already -- if the area next to the spoons is already filled with forks, you obviously have to remove them before you can slide that divider into their space. Or, you can move the other divider, giving you enough room to shove the forks over, so you can move the divider for the spoons.
Myself, I've found the easiest & fastest way for me to enlarge a partition is to delete the partition that's in the way, then after enlarging the partition, I restore a backup image of the one I deleted into the space now available. In my kitchen drawer analogy I remove the forks, slide the divider, then put the forks back into the now smaller area. In many partitioning apps you can just move the data that's in the way rather than deleting the partition, but my backup images are stored on another drive, so data transfers are faster, & it's a simpler, more straightforward operation. A partitioning app, rather than just transferring data from one place [the backup image] to another [the new partition area], has to calculate where data will go with the new partition boundary, then move chunks of data out of the way, check their integrity at the new location, then fill in the now empty space with the data that's next to the existing boundary, again checking integrity after the move.
If/when you shrink a partition, then want to move the next partition to absorb that now empty space, it works the same way -- a partition app will figure out where the data should go, moving it in chunks, checking integrity after each move. And restoring a backup image to the larger space works just as well as restoring it to a smaller area. Besides, if I'm going to backup each partition before I change it -- which you should always do -- almost 1/2 my work's already done. ;)
