Direct Disk Editing

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Before you start - it is recommended to do a disk clean up, get rid of unnecessary files and defragment your hard drive to create as much continuous free space as possible. If your drive is very fragmented, you may want to defragment twice.

Still others may be able to help you recover partitions that you have already deleted, that is unerase or undelete partitions.

There are free tools and commercial tools. Among free tools linux bootable CD are the most reliable. Among the commercial tools to manage your partitions the best known is

Old News ;-)

[Sep 12, 2009] HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor mh-nexus

HxD is a carefully designed and fast hex editor which, additionally to raw disk editing and modifying of main memory (RAM), handles files of any size.

The easy to use interface offers features such as searching and replacing, exporting, checksums/digests, insertion of byte patterns, a file shredder, concatenation or splitting of files, statistics and much more.

Editing works like in a text editor with a focus on a simple and task-oriented operation, as such functions were streamlined to hide differences that are purely technical.
For example, drives and memory are presented similar to a file and are shown as a whole, in contrast to a sector/region-limited view that cuts off data which potentially belongs together. Drives and memory can be edited the same way as a regular file including support for undo. In addition memory-sections define a foldable region and inaccessible sections are hidden by default.

Furthermore a lot of effort was put into making operations fast and efficient, instead of forcing you to use specialized functions for technical reasons or arbitrarily limiting file sizes. This includes a responsive interface and progress indicators for lengthy operations.

Available as a portable and installable edition

RAM-Editor

To edit the main memory

Memory sections are tagged with data-folds

Disk-Editor (Hard disks, floppy disks, ZIP-disks, USB flash drives, CDs, ...)

RAW reading and writing of disks and drives

for Win9x, WinNT and higher

Instant opening regardless of file-size

Up to 8EB; opening and editing is very fast

Liberal but safe file sharing with other programs

Flexible and fast searching/replacing for several data types

Data types: text (including Unicode), hex-values, integers and floats

Search direction: Forward, Backwards, All (starting from the beginning)

File compare (simple)

View data in Ansi, DOS, EBCDIC and Macintosh character sets

Checksum-Generator: Checksum, CRCs, Custom CRC, SHA-1, SHA-512, MD5, ...

Exporting of data to several formats

Source code (Pascal, C, Java, C#, VB.NET)

Formatted output (plain text, HTML, Richtext, TeX)

Hex files (Intel HEX, Motorola S-record)

Insertion of byte patterns

File tools

File shredder for safe file deletion

Splitting or concatenating of files

Basic data analysis (statistics)

Graphical representation of the byte/character distribution

Helps to identify the data type of a selection

Byte grouping

1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 bytes packed together into one column

"Hex only" or "text only"-modes

Progress-window for lengthy operations

Shows the remaining time

Button to cancel

Modified data is highlighted

Unlimited undo

"Find updates..."-function

Easy to use and modern interface

Goto address

Printing

Overwrite or insert mode

Cut, copy, paste insert, paste write

Clipboard support for other hex editors

Visual Studio/Visual C++, WinHex, HexWorkshop, ...

Bookmarks

Ctrl+Shift+Number (0-9) sets a bookmark

Ctrl+Number (0-9) goes to a bookmark

Navigating to nibbles with Ctrl+Left or Ctrl+Right

Flicker free display and fast drawing

LDE - The Linux Disk Editor

lde is a disk editor for linux, originally written to help recover deleted files. It has a simple ncurses interface that resembles an old version of Norton Disk Edit for DOS. lde is 100 percent free under the Gnu public license.

I've put a little bit documentation on this site. There is a very basic walkthrough of the editor which includes something like screenshots. Also, you can read the man page online and a file with some tips on restoring deleted files using lde.

There's more information and the latest binaries over at the lde sourceforge project page.

SystemRescueCd View topic - Linux disk editor

Hello.
Firstly, thank you for your efforts in creating such a useful collection in a package that works so well. I love it and think it's a great system rescue tool.
Will you please consider including the Linux Disk Editor (http://lde.sourceforge.net/) in the next release of SystemRescue CD. I use it for recovering 'lost' partitions that parted won't even look at (yes I use 1.6.6 from your 0.2.8 CD). I use the statically linked lde-i386, as downloaded directly from SourceForge, and run it from a floppy after booting from your SystemRescue CD.

Incidentally, to really mess up a disk's partitions, just create them with parted, then load Partition Magic and let it 'fix' the 'misalignment' errors it finds, then watch as neither Partition Magic, nor parted will look at the disk again. It doesn't always happen, but sometimes yes. One way to avoid this is if only one person with one set of tools works on a system. Not always possible unfortunately.
To fix this, I use gpart to give me a list of 'possible' partition locations, use linux disk editor to view the contents of the partition tables, and a calculator to determine the 'actual' table locations, then linux disk editor again to edit the tables so they work. Tedious, but such a relief (especially for the owner) when it all works again.
I used to boot a DOS floppy and use Norton Disk Editor, but I much prefer to stay within Linux and use Linux tools.

Thank you for your consideration.
Andrew

[Aug 27, 2007] How to partition and format a hard disk in Windows XP

For additional information about the differences between the FAT and NTFS file systems, click the following article numbers to view the articles in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

100108 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/100108/) Overview of FAT, HPFS, and NTFS file systems

310525 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310525/) Description of the FAT32 file system in Windows XP

Etc

Partition Logic: Partition Logic allows you to create, delete, format and move partitions and modify their attributes. It can also clone hard disks, that is, make a copy of an entire hard disk onto another (possibly new) hard disk. It boots from a CD or a floppy disk and runs as a standalone system. At the time this was written, it has some limitations, including the ability to only format FAT partitions, the inability to partition SCSI hard disks, the lack of support for USB mice and keyboards, etc.
SwissKnife: SwissKnife is a Windows program that allows you to create and format partitions on fixed or removable disks as well as change cluster size during formats.
SystemRescueCD: SystemRescueCD is a bootable system rescue CD-ROM for PCs containing utilities that allow you to manage and edit your hard disk partitions (GNU Parted and QTParted), image your hard disk partitions (Partimage), a partition table backup and restore utility (Sfdisk), various file system tools that allow you to format, resize and edit existing partitions on your hard disk. It does not depend on the operating system you have installed on your hard disk - the CDROM is self-contained and is designed to serve as a rescue disk. There is also a version for the blind (it incorporates a speech reader).
Ultimate Boot CD: Ultimate Boot CD is a bootable CDROM for PCs that contain a variety of software for diagnosing and fixing problems on your computer, managing your hard disk partitions (including creating, resizing, copying, moving, etc), imaging or cloning your hard disk partitions (it includes Partition Saving, see elsewhere on the Free Hard Disk Backup and Image Software page, resetting your (forgotten) password on NT, Win2k, or XP, scanning your hard disks for viruses (it includes some free antivirus utilities), etc. The software included on this boot CD include a number of those already listed on this page.
The Partition Resizer: The Partition Resizer resizes and moves your existing partitions for hard disks up to 2 TB (that is, 2 terabytes). It can handle both primary and extended partitions. It is able to move your data (where necessary) so as to make space for (say) an expanded FAT which may be needed if you are increasing the partition table. You can resize (expand or shrink) or move FAT partitions (including FAT32 partitions) and move NTFS partitions (though not resize). The program is a DOS program, and you can put it on a startup disk, reboot to it, and work on your system from there.
Diskman: The author calls Diskman a "hard disk manipulation program". It essentially allows you to create, format and manipulate partitions, backup and restore long filenames, as well as search and edit data on a hard disk. It has a scripting language that you can use to automate the things you want to do. It supports FAT partitions. The current version (at the time I write this) is a DOS program.
NTFS Resize: NTFS Resize is a Linux program that non-destructively resizes NTFS partitions (enlarges and shrinks). It supports all NTFS versions, including those created and used by Windows NT, 2000, XP (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions), 2003 and Longhorn.
TestDisk: TestDisk is a tool to check and undelete partitions. It essentially searches for lost partitions, and allows you to repair errors in the partition table, create a partition table, create a new MBR, etc. It works with FAT32, FAT16, FAT12, NTFS (Windows NT, If you have accidentally lost (or deleted) a partition, you might want to try TestDisk to see if it can find the partition and recover it. 2000, XP), ext2, ext3, BeFS (used by BeOS), BSD disklabel, CramFS, IBM Multiboot, JFS, Linux swap (versions 1 and 2), NSS (Netware), ReiserFS 3.5 and 3.6, and XFS. The program runs under DOS, Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP/2003, Linux, FreeBSD, and Sun Solaris. It is licensed under the GNU GPL.
Extended FDISK: Extended FDISK allows you to create and delete partitions and logical disks on your hard disk. It appears to come with a boot manager (that allows you to choose between multiple operating systems when you boot).
FreeDOS' FDISK: The FreeDOS FDISK supports hard disks of up to 128GB. You can use it to create and delete primary and extended partitions. It works under DOS (FreeDOS, MSDOS and PCDOS).
FIPS: FIPS supports the non-destructive splitting of hard disk partitions. The program is distributed under the GNU GPL.

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Last modified: August 15, 2009

Direct Disk Editing

Old News ;-)

[Sep 12, 2009] HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor mh-nexus

LDE - The Linux Disk Editor

[Aug 27, 2007] How to partition and format a hard disk in Windows XP

Recommended Links

Etc