Parted Magic For Linux

Parted Magic is a commercial Linux-based operating system that allows users to effortlessly partition hard disk drives (HDD), solid disk drives (SSD) and USB flash drives.

The distro allows users to format internal and external hard drives, move, copy, create, delete, expand and shrink hard drive partitions, clone hard drives, create full backups, test drives for impending failure, as well as to test memory for bad sectors.

With this operating system you can also benchmark your computer for a performance rating, securely erase your entire hard drive, wiping it clean from all data, and give access to non-booting systems allowing you to rescue important data.

It is distributed as a Live CD ISO image and powered by the GParted and GNU Parted tools. Command-line programs like partimage, testdisk, fdisk, sfdisk, and dd are also included. It supports both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.

It provides a complex boot menu, from where users can run the entire operating system directly from RAM (system memory) ejecting the boot medium, change the system locale, as well as many other useful options.

Even if it doesn’t provide users with a desktop computing environment, Parted Magic includes several popular open source applications, such as the Mozilla Firefox web browser, Audacious audio player, and Clam AntiVirus virus scanner.

It can be used to repair broken MBRs or bootloaders, encrypt file systems in user space, as well as to format HDDs or SSDs with various filesystems (it supports all the known Linux, Windows and Mac file systems).

Whether you want to format a hard disk drive, clone an entire drive, or wipe an entire disk, Parted Magic is the perfect tool. However, considering the fact that it is no longer free, you could try the GParted Live CD or Clonezilla Live CD Linux distributions.