Disk editor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A disk editor is a computer program that lets the user read, edit, and write the low-level raw data on a disk drive (a hard disk, USB flash drive or floppy disk drive). Such an editor may be used e.g. to repair/reconstruct damaged files and directories (and, for that matter, damage them in the first place).
Disk editors for home computers of the 1980s were often included as part of utility software packages on floppies or cartridges. The latter had the advantage of being instantly available at power-on and after resets, instead of having to be (re)loaded on the same disk drive that later would hold the floppy to be edited (the majority of home computer users possessed only one floppy disk drive). Having the disk editor on cartridge also helped the user avoid editing/damaging the disk editor application disk by mistake.
[edit] List of some (products containing) disk editors
- HxD - (Freeware) fast and intuitive hex editor (including disk editor and RAM editor) for Windows9x/NT and higher.
- Epyx FastLoad for the Commodore 64 computer and 1541 disk drive
- The Final Cartridge (C64/1541)
- Action Replay (C64/1541)
- Norton Utilities DISKEDIT (for FAT on MS-DOS)
- Hexprobe Hex Editor A professional hex editor for Microsoft Windows capable of editing and finding in hard-disk and logical-drive.
- debugfs (debugger and editor for ext2 on Linux)
- DiskEditor(Open Source Disk Editor hosted on sourceforge.net for DOS)
- BIEW A Hex-Editor capable of disk editing, free and open source
- WDE disk editor Very simple (19KB) but well designed, for [Free]DOS
