To get support for your purchase, reply directly to the order confirmation email you received after buying Parted Magic. This keeps your order details attached to the conversation and helps us respond faster. Please allow one to two business days for a reply.
For pre-sales or general inquiries, please use the Contact page. Below you’ll find answers to the questions we’re asked most often. This page replaces our old support forum, in a format that’s easier to search and keep current. If your question isn’t covered here, please reach out using the methods above.
Can Parted Magic securely erase individual files?
No. Secure Erase is a drive-level operation that wipes an entire SSD or HDD via a single command issued to the drive’s firmware. Per-file secure erase isn’t actually achievable on modern SSDs by any tool — the drive’s controller relocates data internally for wear leveling and over-provisioning, leaving copies in cells no operating system can address. Drive-level erase is the only method that reliably destroys the data. If you need to clean up traces of deleted files on a running system (browser history, application caches, free space on spinning HDDs), BleachBit is included in Parted Magic and handles that use case. For guaranteed destruction of sensitive data on an SSD, full-drive Secure Erase remains the only reliable method.
Does Parted Magic run on Windows?
No. Parted Magic is a bootable Linux environment that you run from a USB drive or CD, not an installable Windows application. This isn’t a design limitation — it’s a hardware requirement. The commands that perform secure erasure (ATA Secure Erase, NVMe Format, Sanitize) cannot be issued to a drive that is currently running the operating system; the drive’s firmware will reject them. This is why no legitimate secure-erase tool ships as an installable Windows program, including the manufacturer utilities from Samsung, Crucial, Western Digital, and others. Booting from external media is the only way the work can be done.
How many computers can I use my license on?
Your Parted Magic license is unlimited — you can use it on as many computers and erase as many drives as you need. Unlike enterprise competitors that charge per-drive or per-endpoint (often at dramatic markups), Parted Magic is a single flat purchase that covers your organization’s use. This pricing model is one of the reasons IT shops, refurbishers, and data recovery businesses continue to use Parted Magic even when larger vendors compete for their budget.
Does Parted Magic securely erase SSDs, NVMe, and M.2 drives?
Yes, all of the above. Parted Magic supports every current secure erasure method defined by NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2:
- SATA SSDs and HDDs: ATA Secure Erase and ATA Sanitize (Block Erase, Crypto Scramble, Overwrite)
- NVMe drives (including M.2 NVMe): NVMe Format with Cryptographic Erase or User Data Erase, automatically selecting the best method supported by the drive
- eMMC storage: eMMC Secure Erase and Sanitize
- Self-encrypting drives (OPAL): PSID Revert for drives where the password is lost or unknown
All of these operations are classified as Purge-level erasure under NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2, meaning they are appropriate for drives containing sensitive data being decommissioned, resold, or repurposed. M.2 drives are fully supported in both SATA and NVMe variants.
Does Parted Magic provide a certificate of destruction?
Yes. After each successful erase operation, Parted Magic automatically generates a signed PDF certificate of destruction documenting the drive’s make, model, serial number, capacity, the erasure method used, start and completion timestamps, and the NIST SP 800-88 Rev. 2 classification of the operation performed. The certificate meets the documentation requirements expected by auditors, compliance officers, and chain-of-custody processes. No additional software or paid add-on is required — certificate generation is built into the standard Erase program.
How do I boot Parted Magic from USB?
After purchasing, you’ll receive a download link for the Parted Magic ISO file. To run it, write the ISO to a USB drive using a tool that handles bootable ISOs correctly. Recommended options:
- Rufus (Windows) — simple, widely used, handles both BIOS and UEFI
- Ventoy (Windows, Linux) — lets you drop multiple ISOs onto one USB and choose at boot
- balenaEtcher (Windows, macOS, Linux) — cross-platform, straightforward interface
- dd (Linux, macOS) — command-line option for advanced users
Once the USB is prepared, boot your target computer from it (usually by pressing F12, F11, Esc, or Del during startup to access the boot menu — the exact key varies by manufacturer). Parted Magic will load into a desktop environment where you can launch the tool you need.
For step-by-step instructions on all three operating systems, see the Parted Magic installation guide.
Booting stops partway with a “wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock” error — what do I do?
If the “copying files to RAM” step stalls partway through and you see an error similar to:
mount: /run/br_sqfs: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/loop0, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
…followed by a red message that mounting the .SQFS file failed and you are now on the command line, the compressed filesystem on your boot media could not be read intact. This is not a RAM or hardware-compatibility problem — it means the data itself is damaged. There are only two causes: a corrupted ISO download or a bad flash drive.
First, verify your ISO against the published checksum. If it doesn’t match, download the ISO again. If it does match, the flash drive is at fault — write the ISO to a different USB drive and boot again. Flash drives frequently fail silently: the write appears to complete normally, but the data reads back corrupted. Switching to a different flash drive resolves this error in nearly every case.
Parted Magic doesn’t detect my NVMe or M.2 SSD — why?
If an NVMe or M.2 SSD is missing from the drive list — often while SATA drives in the same machine show up normally — the cause is almost always a BIOS setting rather than a fault with the drive or a limitation of Parted Magic. Dell in particular ships most systems with the storage controller set to RAID On (Intel Rapid Storage Technology) rather than AHCI, and other manufacturers do the same under names like Intel RST, RST Premium, or Optane. In that mode the chipset hides the NVMe drive behind Intel’s RAID controller, and because there is no Intel RST driver for Linux, the drive vanishes from the entire operating system — not just from the Erase program. GParted, Disk Health, and every other tool on the disc will come up empty as well.
To correct it, enter BIOS setup at power-on (F2 on Dell systems) and locate SATA Operation under System Configuration — on newer Dell firmware it appears as SATA/NVMe Operation under Storage. Change the setting from RAID On to AHCI (or AHCI/NVMe), save and exit, then boot Parted Magic again. The drive will be there.
Two things worth knowing before you change it:
- An existing Windows installation on that machine will not boot normally after the controller mode is changed. This is irrelevant if you are about to erase the drive; if it isn’t, set the BIOS back to RAID On when you’re finished, or follow your manufacturer’s procedure for moving Windows to AHCI permanently.
- If the drive is still missing in AHCI mode, check whether the BIOS itself lists it under system information. When the firmware can’t see the drive either, it isn’t seated properly or it has failed, and no software running on that machine can reach it.
To confirm what the operating system can actually see, open a terminal in Parted Magic and run lsblk to list every block device the kernel has found, or nvme list for NVMe drives specifically. If your drive is absent from both, the BIOS setting above is the first thing to check.
I lost my download email — what do I do?
No problem. Email sales@partedmagic.com with the name and email address used at purchase, and we’ll resend your download link. If you have your order number handy, including it will speed things up, but it’s not required.