I had my first opportunity to use the new version 5.0 of PartedMagic and all I can write is that PartedMagic just took a quantum leap as it moved from the 4.x series to 5.0 and the changes include a new opening menu screen with options not seen before including the SuperGrub disks for version 1 and 2 grub. Besides the new menu and run options, PM provides both Clonezilla and Ghost4Linux for all your cloning tasks. I used Clonezilla yesterday to move a physical hard disk to a virtual disk in VirtualBox using the cloning process, very cool. Here is part of what PartedMagic had to say about this release:

"Parted Magic employs core programs of GParted and Parted to handle partitioning tasks with ease, while featuring other useful programs (e.g. Clonezilla, Partimage, TestDisk, Truecrypt, G4L, SuperGrubDisk, ddrescue, etc...) and an excellent set of documentation to benefit the user. An extensive collection of file system tools are also included, as Parted Magic supports the following: ext2, ext3, ext4, fat16, fat32, hfs, hfs+, jfs, linux-swap, ntfs, reiserfs, reiser4, and xfs.

Parted Magic requires at least a i586 processor and 256MB of RAM to operate or 128MB in "Live" mode.

Features

* Format internal and external hard drives.
* Move, copy, create, delete, expand & shrink hard drive partitions.
* Clone your hard drive, to create a full backup.
* Test hard drives for impending failure.
* Test memory for bad sectors.
* Benchmark your computer for a performance rating.
* Securely erase your entire hard drive, wiping it clean from all data.
* Gives access to non-booting systems allowing you to rescue important data.
* Runs from the CD, no install required.

Links:
http://partedmagic.com/
http://partedmagic.com/programs.html
http://partedmagic.com/documentation.html

More on this blog later as I continue to use PartedMagic 5.0...