A hard disk is an indispensable component of a server, no matter whether you use a traditional mechanical disk, SSD, or hardware RAID array. You need a reliable disk partition tool for the server to optimize and manage hard disk drives. For example, you may need to:
- Initialize a brand-new disk, and create, delete, or format partitions.
- Shrink, extend, merge, and move partitions to optimize disk space usage.
- Clone a disk partition to back up or migrate the Operating System and data.
- Convert disk and partition types under certain situations.
This article introduces the built-in disk partition tool in Windows Server 2012/2016 and the best partition software for Server 2012/2016/2019/2022/2025.
Built-in Disk Partition Tool in Server 2012/2016
As in other versions, Windows Server 2012/2016 has a built-in Disk Management tool. If you just need basic operations to create, delete, format a partition, or change a drive letter, this tool can help you easily. It has limited ability to shrink and extend allocated partitions without losing data in most cases.
Right-click any partition or the leftmost area of a disk, and you will see the available operations. Disk Management is easy to use, but if you want to resize a partition without restrictions or perform other advanced operations, third-party disk partition software is required.
Best Disk Partition Tool for Windows Server
There are many disk partition software programs available, and their GUIs and functions are all similar. How do you select the right partition tool for your server?
Unlike data recovery software that only reads information from a hard drive volume, disk partition software will modify the parameters of the associated disk, partition, and files. Therefore, there is a potential risk of system and data damage. Data protection ability is the most important factor for partitioning software.
Because of its powerful data protection ability, fast file-moving algorithm, and many other advantages, NIUBI Partition Editor is recommended as the best partition tool for Windows Server 2012/2016/2019/2022/2025.
Download this tool, and you will see 5 blocks in the main window.
- All partitions with detailed information, such as capacity, free space, file system, type, and status.
- All physical/virtual/RAID hard disks and USB flash drives with a graphical partition structure.
- All available operations for the selected disk or partition; unavailable operations are hidden automatically.
- To avoid mistakes, all operations you perform will be listed as pending for preview.
- Undo and redo the pending operations, or confirm to apply changes.
What Does Partition Editor Server Do?
To Unallocated space:
- Create one or more volumes
- Wipe data on it
- Surface test (scan for bad sectors)
- View properties (detailed parameters)
To a whole disk:
- Initialize
- Change status to offline or online
- Set read-only attribute
- Wipe disk (cannot be recovered)
- Surface test
- View properties
- Clone disk to migrate data and OS
- Convert MBR disk to GPT
- Delete all partitions
- Cleanup disk
To a single partition:
- Resize volume (shrink and extend)
- Move location
- Merge two adjacent volumes in 1 step
- Copy to Unallocated space
- Convert to Logical or Primary partition
- Convert NTFS to FAT32
- Change drive letter (such as D:)
- Change label (add a name or modify)
- Set as Active
- Check file system integrity
- Defrag to improve performance
- Hide from File Explorer
- Delete (files can be recovered)
- Format volume to use as new
- Wipe (erase data permanently)
- Surface test
- Explore (view files/folders with directory)
- View properties
The Safest Partition Tool for Server 2012/2016
NIUBI Partition Editor has powerful technologies to protect server disk partitions.
1. Virtual Mode
As you can see in block 4 in the main window, all operations are listed as pending for preview. You can click "Undo" to cancel an unwanted operation or click "Redo" to recover canceled operations. Real disk partitions will not be changed until you click the "Apply" button to confirm.
2. Cancel-at-Will
If you have applied pending operations, other partition software programs do not allow canceling the ongoing operations from the beginning or over 50% progress, even if you made a mistake.
Thanks to the unique Cancel-at-will technology, you can cancel ongoing operations at any progress with NIUBI Partition Editor. Everything will revert to its original status in a flash.
3. 1-Second Rollback
Better than other disk partition tools, NIUBI Partition Editor provides unique 1-Second Rollback technology to protect your system and data. If it detects an error when resizing partitions, it is able to revert the server to its original status automatically and rapidly. If this happens, nothing will be changed.
4. Hot-Clone
NIUBI Partition Editor is able to clone a disk partition in Windows without server interruption. You may clone the system disk before any operations or regularly as a backup. Whenever the system disk encounters an issue, you can boot from the cloned disk immediately. Restoring from an image backup takes a much longer time.
The Fastest Windows Server Partition Manager
When moving a partition, shrinking a partition rightward, or extending a volume leftward, all files in these volumes must be moved to new locations. The more files there are in the partition, the longer it takes to finish.
Because of the advanced file-moving algorithm, NIUBI Partition Editor is 30% to 300% faster than other tools. This is very helpful for saving time, especially when the operations require a server reboot to proceed.
You will not notice the performance difference if you do not compare it with other tools. If you have a testing physical computer or virtual machine, simply compare it with other tools in the same environment.
Other Benefits of This Server Partition Tool
Easy to Use
You just need to click, drag, and drop on the disk map to modify disk partitions. Anyone without help can use this tool well. Refer to the video guide.
Hot-Resize
NIUBI Partition Editor can shrink and extend most partitions without rebooting the server. (Close all running applications and open files/folders in the partition that you want to shrink or move before starting the program.)
- The pending operations with a
in front can be done in Windows. - The ones marked with
require rebooting.
Support Multiple OS & Storage
This disk partition tool is compatible with Windows Server 2012/2016/2019/2022/2025 and previous Server 2008/2003. All types of SSD/HDD, VMware/Hyper-V, all types of hardware RAID arrays, and USB flash drives are supported.
All-in-One Toolkit
Most of your disk and partition management requirements can be fulfilled. Learn more about the server partition tool.
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