Free hard disk partition software for windows

Disk Tester brings you a powerful hard disk utility which is designed to test CDs, floppies and hard disks.

This program is adware because:

• Displays ad banners or other types of advertising material during its runtime

With this program you could save all data on a partition to a file (such as you could save this file on a CD for example). Then if something goes wrong, you can completely restore the partition from the backup file. You no longer have to reinstall every piece of software from scratch. All you have to do is restore the partition from the backup file and then update any software that was modified since the backup was created.

Note: beware of software which installs or modifies files on multiple partitions (e.g. Windows programs which update the registry or DLLs that may be on other partitions). If one partition is saved or restored, you must include others (otherwise, inconsistencies could prevent software from running).

Partition Saving is able to compress data (using the gzip compression algorithm) and split it up into several files (e.g. if you need to save a 2 Gb partition onto a CD, this can be done by compressing it and, if necessary, splitting it up into 650 Mb files). Most partition types are supported. In the case of FAT (12, 16 and 32), ext2/3 and NTFS partitions, you can choose between saving all sectors or in-use sectors only.

Major Features:

1. Save an element (hard disk, partition, floppy disk, device)
2. Restore an element that was saved before
3. Copy an element
4. Copy a backup file created by this program, modifying its size or compression rate
5. Verify created files
6. Update partition definition in Windows 2000/XP/Vista registry
7. Update BOOTSECT.DOS/BOOTSECT.BAK file
8. Explore a partition
9. Simulate elements with created files
10. Create files on a NTFS drive under Windows for use in saving
11. Cancel bad sectors information of a filesystem

Enhancements:

Released on January 18th. Major change is that it is first Linux version (DOS and Windows versions still existing). There is some constraints on this version, notably Linux version cannot save an active partition (for this you need a LiveCD). I cannot test this version on all Linux distributions and versions, mostly for 64 bits versions.

All versions are into the same file that does not need any installation (just uncompress it into a directory).

Others evolutions are:

• availability to save partitions table and all sectors of an hard disk in Windows version (you need at least Windows XP).
• availability to load options file from interface with viewing it before. A comment can also be added to options file when it is created.
• take into account of file extended access rights on ext2/ext3 partitions to allow their opening into explorer (this did not disallow their saving/restoring).
• availability to force disk size detection with depending on partitions table content. This will only concern DOS version with using the "-tds" option (note: for less than 8 Go disk, this can lead to a difference of detection with previous versions).
• remove of some checks that could disallow detection of some USB disks (note: this can lead to changes in disk numbering if USB disk is found before other ones).
• some changes into user interface.
  

Requirements:
Hardware:

• 386 or better
• 4 Mb of memory (could work with less, but data compression might not work). Free DOS memory must be at least 300 Kb
  

Software:

• DOS (version >= 3.3)

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