Parted Magic review
A bootable toolkit for technicians handling partition, recovery, cloning, and erasure work.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Parted Magic is a bootable Linux-based disk utility for IT professionals, system administrators, data-recovery specialists, refurbishers, and serious hobbyists. It runs from USB, optical media, or PXE rather than installing on the host system. Its toolkit covers partition creation, resizing, moving, and copying; filesystem operations; disk cloning and imaging; lost-partition and file recovery; diagnostics; encryption access; and secure erasure. The included VisParted editor supports MBR and GPT partition tables and a broad range of Linux, Windows, and other filesystems.
Pricing is structured around update access. The Single Version costs $19 one-time and includes the current release, with no future updates and a 14-day money-back guarantee. The Quarterly Subscription costs $19 per quarter and includes updates during the active subscription. The One Year Subscription costs $59 per year and also includes updates during the active subscription. Parted Magic Forever costs $349 one-time for unlimited use and all future updates, but is final sale. An Enterprise Compliance License provides lifetime access and future updates, along with W-9, purchase orders, ACH or wire transfer, invoicing, and vendor onboarding support; it is also final sale.
Its strongest fit is recovery and maintenance work where boot media and broad storage access matter. Users can unlock LUKS and BitLocker volumes, resume interrupted partition moves using journals, securely erase ATA, NVMe, SAS/SCSI, and eMMC/SD storage, and access remote storage through SSH, Samba, NFS, FTP/SFTP, and CIFS. TestDisk and PhotoRec add lost-partition and file recovery. Choose Parted Magic when a technician needs a concentrated bootable environment across Linux, Windows, and macOS workflows. Choose another tool when the priority is a free plan, a conventional installable Windows application, or a permanently updated $19 purchase.
Parted Magic pros and cons
- Where it wins
- Boots from USB, optical media, or PXE without host installation
- Combines partitioning, cloning, recovery, encryption access, and erasure
- Supports SSH, Samba, NFS, FTP/SFTP, CIFS, LVM2, LUKS, and BitLocker
- Where it doesn't
- No free plan is available
- The $19 Single Version includes no future updates
- Runs as a bootable Linux environment, not an installable Windows application
Parted Magic fact sheet, pricing and score →
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