Screenshot of Parted Magic in 2014
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Developer | Patrick Verner Parted Magic LLC. |
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OS family | Unix-like |
Working state | Current |
Latest release | 2017_01_08 / January 8, 2017 |
Available in | English |
Platforms | IA-32, x86-64 |
Kernel type | Linux (Monolithic) |
Default user interface | Openbox |
License | GNU General Public License |
Official website | partedmagic |
Parted Magic is a commercial Linux distribution with disk partitioning and data recovery tools, sold as a Linux-based bootable disk. The distribution's nomenclature is derived from the name of the software package GNU Parted.
The program is directly bootable from a CD, USB flash drive, or through a network using PXE on PC hardware, and does not require installation, or the presence of an installed operating system.
Although originally designed for mechanical hard disk drives, Parted Magic is suitable for use also with solid state drives and can perform an ATA Secure Erase (a method that is built into the hard drive controller to return the drive into its factory state).
Parted Magic supports reading and writing to a variety of modern file systems, including ext3, ext4, FAT, exFAT, and NTFS, and as such is able to access disk drives formatted for use under Microsoft Windows and GNU/Linux systems.
The software distribution includes networking support, and comes with the Firefox web browser.
As of version 11.11.11, Parted Magic supports Intel x86 and x86-64 processors natively, and requires a computer with at least an i586 Intel-compatible processor and 175MB of RAM. x86 versions from 2013_09_26 do not require the Physical Address Extension (PAE) computer processor feature.