I just released my first Disk Verifier tutorial video! This video shows you how to make a Parted Magic live CD/DVD and USB drive, and how to add Disk Verifier to the live media. I showed all of this on a Linux system, but there are also extra videos below to demonstrate how to create it on a Windows system.
As with my DDRescue-GUI tutorial videos, the video is embedded here for convenience, with some notes.
The Video (Linux)
The Video (macOS)
The Video (Windows)
Purchase Links
You can purchase Disk Verifier from https://www.hamishmb.com/html/diskverifier.php, and you can purchase Parted Magic from their website (affiliate link - I earn commission for purchases made through this link).
Creating a Parted Magic Live USB with Disk Verifier
In the video, I use a spare USB stick, and unetbootin to do this. Unetbootin can be downloaded from https://unetbootin.github.io/, and is available for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Note that other tools, such as Rufus, can prepare the USB stick for you as well. I haven’t tried these tools, but I know that unetbootin will work.
You also need to add Disk Verifier to the live USB. This is very easy to do, and all you need to do is put the module (the txz file), into pmagic/pmodules on your USB stick. There are some written instructions for doing this available on Parted Magic’s website at https://partedmagic.com/adding-programs/.
Creating a Parted Magic Live DVD with Disk Verifier (Linux Only)
WARNING: This is more complicated, because it involves remastering the Parted Magic ISO file. Most of the time, a USB stick will work fine, and is the much easier option. I recommend you do it that way instead. This section is highly technical, so feel free to skip it if you can use a USB stick instead.
The script provided by Parted Magic to rebuild the ISO might only work on Linux, and possibly macOS.
Windows users: I will try to find another way of doing this and provide instructions here and in another video.
Instructions for the remastering process can be found at https://partedmagic.com/how-to-remaster-the-iso-file/.
1st note: I found that after I extracted the ISO file, I didn’t have permission to write to the files inside. In order to fix this, I ran the following commands to grant myself permission: "sudo chown hamish:hamish -R ./", and "sudo chmod o+rwx -R ./". After that, I could put the module in pmagic/pmodules as with the USB stick. Please make sure you only run these commands when you’re in the folder/directory that holds the files from the ISO!
2nd note: I initially had an error when rebuilding the ISO, because the folder I was in had a space in the name. If you encounter errors, make sure the folder (and any folders before it) don’t have spaces in the name.
Creating the CD/DVD itself is easy: use a standard burning program to write your Parted Magic ISO to a disc. Your operating system almost definitely has a standard way of doing this for you. If it doesn’t, there are a variety of tools available to make this easier. I tend to use K3B on Linux to do this, because it’s easy and I like the interface.
Notes about the demonstration
I should note that secure erasing a drive over USB is a really bad idea! I did this with my particular drive and caddy because I know it works and I had no easy alternative. However, please do *NOT* do this! Various bad things can happen to your drive and render it unusable as can be seen at https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/ATA_Secure_Erase and http://www.overclockers.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-693716.html.
More information about how to use Parted Magic’s Secure Erase GUI can be found at https://partedmagic.com/secure-erase/.
As you have seen using Disk Verifier in conjunction with Parted Magic’s Secure Erase GUI is quite simple, but if you do encounter any issues, head over to my support forum at https://www.hamishmb.com/forum/, and follow the instructions here to gain access to the Disk Verifier support forums.
