If you decide you want the genuine Parted Magic 20230521 or newer:
Paying supports ongoing development of a polished toolkit that saves many hours of recovery work. If you decide you want the genuine Parted
Important: Parted Magic is not free software in the monetary sense. Since late 2013, the developer (Patrick Verner) distributes it as a paid product. The official website (partedmagic.com) sells access — typically $11 for a 1-year subscription to updates, after which you can continue using the last version you downloaded. Paying supports ongoing development of a polished toolkit
Older versions (pre-2013) were open-source under GPL, but modern releases are paid proprietary builds of GPL tools. If you decide you want the genuine Parted
If you need the functionality of Parted Magic but cannot pay for it, consider these free and open-source bootable utilities:
| Tool | Best for | |------|-----------| | GParted Live | Partitioning only (lightweight, official) | | SystemRescue | Data recovery, partitioning, disk cloning | | Rescatux | Repair boot loaders (GRUB, Windows) | | Clonezilla Live | Disk/partition cloning and imaging | | Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) | RAM testing, CPU diagnostics, wiping |
Most of these are completely free, regularly updated, and distributed with SHA256 checksums from official websites.