Parted Magic Updated To 4.4

Parted Magic version 4.4 was released on the 13th of this month. I carry the live USB version with me all the time since you never know when you will need the tools. Updating the USB drive was very simple process. After downloading the pmagic-usb-4.4.zip file (mirrors here) simply unpack the files to your hard drive. Copy the folders boot and pmagic to your thumb drive replacing the current files. That's it your done with an upgrade. If you do not yet have this on a USB key follow the instructions on the documentation pages. If you prefer a bootable cd Parted Magic has an iso for that too. I did test my upgrade and the boot was clean and quick. One of the additions I noticed was Super Grub Disk in the boot menu. Super Grub Disk is a great tool for editing the Grub menu. I have used it on more than one occasion when I had a non-booting machine with a Grub error. I think Super Grub Disk deserves a post of its own so let's get back to Parted Magic. For the complete list of updates visit the homepage and drop a donation in the author's PayPal button to ensure this great set of tools will continue to be developed.

Review: Parted Magic

For the last year or so I have been carrying a flash drive around my neck loaded with Parted Magic. It uses less than 100 MB of disk space and boots very quickly. Recently version 4.1 has been released. Parted Magic comes as a complete OS and can run on almost anything still plugged in today and quite a few machines that have been gathering dust. I'm not going to cover all the tools so please visit the author's site for the most complete information. I have been using Parted Magic since version 3.5. I have used it to clone drives with Partimage. It worked great. I had a cloned drive in less than thirty minutes. I have also recovered lost files on a supposedly dead drive with Photorec. Don't let the name fool you this is a powerful file recovery tool. For your partition work you can't beat Gparted. This great tool will allow you to create, delete, re-size and format to several file systems hard drives and removable media. Parted Magic also connects to the Internet if needed and will recognize a variety of network cards. Once you have recovered those files burn them to disk using Xfburn. All of these tools are available on the Internet for free you only have to search them out and download them. But why go to all the trouble when there is Parted Magic. Have I convinced you to download your own Parted Magic? If not visit their website because I have only scratched the surface of this superb tool. I will wrap up this post because I need to download the newest version and upgrade my flash drive before some new catastrophe strikes.