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Is there any free program out there that lets you manually edit partition table(s) (including the extended partitions -- not just primary)?

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gparted, parted, every Linux live-cd in existence... for a trio of disk tools, look at gparted, clonezilla, and test disk. – Joe Internet Aug 21 '11 at 19:11
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Sure. It's called a hex editor. – Hello71 Aug 21 '11 at 19:16
@Hello71: I have no idea what the partition table format on the disk is, so a hex editor is useless. (I think you already knew that, though. -__- ) – Mehrdad Aug 21 '11 at 19:21
Boot off just about any Linux CD, run fdisk – Chad Feller Aug 21 '11 at 21:09
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3 Answers

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It seems that PTEdit is able to edit the MBR information.

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Does it handle extended partitions? – Mehrdad Aug 21 '11 at 19:22
Well, the screenshot does have a "Go to EPBR" button. (I haven't actually tested the software myself, though. Using GPT here.) – grawity Aug 21 '11 at 19:23
oooo that looks interesting, I'd missed that; I'll give it a try. +1 – Mehrdad Aug 21 '11 at 19:23
Oh dear... I'm reading the information and it looks like the logical partitions (as compared to primary ones) are much more complicated than I imagined. Wish I could +1 again, that is such a useful page... – Mehrdad Aug 21 '11 at 19:50
You'd think I'd have learned how the SE sites work by now... – Mehrdad Aug 21 '11 at 20:14
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GNU Parted, and gparted are quite good tools. You can find them on the parted magic cd.

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Really? They let you manually play around with the partition table? So e.g. I can use it to re-order my EPBR entries to my liking? I didn't know that.. – Mehrdad Aug 21 '11 at 19:14
@Mehrdad no, that wasn't part of your question. – psusi Aug 21 '11 at 19:17
Perhaps I'm misreading but my question literally stated "manually edit partition table". – Mehrdad Aug 21 '11 at 19:20
@Mehrdad: "re-order my EPBR entries to my liking"? Just...why? – grawity Aug 21 '11 at 19:21
@grawity: Because some programs (notably Partition Magic) complain if they're not in a particular order. – Mehrdad Aug 21 '11 at 19:24
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EDIT: In the interest of improving the results for people that may end up here wrongly, I have learned today that there is a difference between partitions and partition tables. This wikipedia entry on partition tables begins to explain the difference; that article leads to this one on the Master Boot Record, which is the term I'm more familiar with.

Original Answer: Easeus has a partition tool that is free. It works great, and can do a lot of things that the pay-for tools can do. I've used it a lot, many people like it.

You can adjust the primary and logical partitions, choose how much to leave in the existing partition before making a new one, and can even set it up in your main OS and have it configure it on reboot. Super handy tool.

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Are you sure it's a partition table editor and not just a partition manager? – Mehrdad Aug 21 '11 at 19:14
It does edit the partition table, just not the way old diskprobe tools allowed you to do it manually, it is an automated edit depending on what you choose to do in the Easeus software. Aggie proof in most cases. – Moab Aug 22 '11 at 5:43
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