Tired of Acronis, EaseUS, and Partition Magic charging you $50/year for basic disk operations? So were we. Setec Partition Wizard is a comprehensive C++17/Qt6 disk utility covering partition management, formatting, recovery, imaging, diagnostics, security, maintenance, and SD card recovery — all in one tool, completely free.

Features

Partition Management

Create, delete, resize, move, merge, and split partitions with a visual disk map
Full MBR, GPT, and Apple Partition Map support
GParted-style operation queue — preview all changes before applying them
Partition alignment optimization for SSDs and 4K sector drives
Raw partition table editing for advanced users

Formatting — Every Filesystem You Can Think Of

Modern Windows: NTFS, FAT32/16/12, exFAT, ReFS

Linux / Open Source: ext2/3/4, Btrfs, XFS, ZFS, JFS, ReiserFS, Reiser4, F2FS, JFFS2, NILFS2, Linux swap

Apple: HFS+, APFS (read-only detection), HFS Classic, MFS

Legacy & Retro (because why not): HPFS (OS/2), Minix, Amiga Fast File System (AFFS/OFS), BeOS BFS, QNX4/6, UFS (BSD), FFS, Xenix, Coherent, SysV, VxFS, ADFS (Acorn), UDF, ISO9660, RomFS, CramFS, SquashFS, VFAT, UMSDOS

Console & Gaming: FATX (Xbox / Xbox 360), STFS (Xbox 360 packages), GDFX (Xbox Game Disc), PS2 Memory Card

Virtual Disk Images: VHD, VHDX (Hyper-V), VMDK (VMware), QCOW2 (QEMU), VDI (VirtualBox)

Disc & Archive Images: RVZ/WIA (Dolphin Wii), WUA (Cemu Wii U), WBFS (Wii Backup), NRG (Nero), MDF (Alcohol 120%), CDI (DiscJuggler)

SD Card Recovery

Detects SD/microSD cards Windows cannot see — finds cards with corrupted partition tables, interrupted formats, and RAW/uninitialized media
Scans by bus type, removable flag, and model keywords — even finds cards with no partition table at all
Full repair workflow: clean partition table → reinitialize → format to FAT32/exFAT/NTFS
Auto-selects exFAT for cards over 32 GB
Uses raw IOCTL operations (IOCTL_DISK_CREATE_DISK, IOCTL_DISK_SET_DRIVE_LAYOUT_EX) to bypass Windows volume manager limitations

Recovery

Deleted partition recovery — scans for lost MBR/GPT partition entries
File carving — recovers files by signature from MFT records, FAT directories, ext inodes, and raw byte-pattern carving
Boot repair — rebuilds MBR boot code, fixes Windows BCD, restores GPT backup headers
Supports recovery across MBR, GPT, and ext superblock structures

Disk Imaging

Full disk imaging — create and restore complete disk/partition images
ISO flashing — write ISO/IMG files to USB drives and SD cards with hybrid ISO and UEFI boot detection
Disk cloning — sector-by-sector or smart clone (skips unallocated space)
Checksum verification — SHA-256, MD5, and CRC32 on all imaging operations

Linux Flasher

Built-in image catalog — Raspberry Pi OS, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Kali, DietPi, Alpine, Arch Linux ARM
One-click download & flash — download, decompress, and flash in a single pipeline
Decompression support — .xz (streaming via xz-embedded), .gz (zlib), .zip, .7z (via 7-Zip)
Resume support — resume interrupted downloads automatically
Custom images — flash any local .img/.iso file or paste a download URL

Kali Creator

USB/SD Card — download and flash any Kali variant (Installer, Live, ARM) with optional persistence partition
Virtual Machine — create QCOW2/VMDK/VDI/VHDX disks or download pre-built VMware/VirtualBox/Hyper-V VMs
Containers — pull kalilinux/kali-rolling via Docker or Podman with live log output
Cloud Image — download official Kali cloud images (Raw, QCOW2, OVA)

S.M.A.R.T. & Diagnostics

S.M.A.R.T. monitoring for both ATA and NVMe drives — read all attributes, thresholds, and health status
Disk benchmarks — sequential and random read/write, queue depth 1 and 32
Surface scan — find bad sectors before they eat your data

Security

FIDO2/WebAuthn — enumerate connected security keys, manage PINs, factory reset, create/verify credentials via the Windows WebAuthn API
Encrypted vaults — create AES-256 encrypted virtual disk containers (XTS, CBC, and GCM modes) with PBKDF2 key derivation
Boot authentication keys — create USB-based HMAC-SHA256 tokens for application access control
All cryptography uses Windows CNG (BCrypt) — zero external dependencies, no OpenSSL

Maintenance

Secure erase — multiple wipe standards:
- Single-pass zero fill
- DoD 5220.22-M (3-pass and 7-pass variants)
- Gutmann 35-pass method
- Random fill and custom byte patterns
Boot repair with MBR reconstruction and BCD rebuilding
SD Card Recovery — repair cards that Windows refuses to recognize

Screenshots

Coming soon — the UI features a tabbed interface with visual disk maps, operation queues, and real-time progress tracking.

System Requirements

Requirement	Details
OS	Windows 10/11 x64
Privileges	Administrator (required for raw disk access)
Disk Space	~100 MB
Runtime	Qt 6 libraries (included in release builds)

Building From Source

# Debug build
cmake --preset default
cmake --build --preset default

# Release build
cmake --preset release
cmake --build --preset release

Build Requirements

CMake 3.25+
Qt 6 (msvc2022_64 kit)
MSVC (Visual Studio 2022+)
Ninja (recommended, bundled with Qt)

See docs/build.md for detailed build instructions, troubleshooting, and architecture overview.

Architecture

src/
├── core/               # spw_core static library
│   ├── common/         # Types, Result<T>, Error, Constants, Logging
│   ├── disk/           # RawDiskHandle, VolumeHandle, DiskEnumerator,
│   │                   # SmartReader, PartitionTable, FilesystemDetector
│   ├── filesystem/     # FormatEngine (all filesystem formatters)
│   ├── operations/     # GParted-style operation queue
│   ├── recovery/       # Partition recovery, file carving, boot repair
│   ├── diagnostics/    # Benchmarks, surface scan
│   ├── imaging/        # Disk cloner, image creator/restorer, ISO flasher
│   ├── maintenance/    # Secure erase, SD card recovery
│   └── security/       # Encrypted vaults, FIDO2, boot auth
├── ui/                 # spw_ui static library (Qt Widgets)
│   ├── MainWindow      # Tab container with visual disk map
│   ├── tabs/           # One tab per feature area
│   └── widgets/        # DiskMapWidget (GParted-style visual partition map)
└── app/                # Executable entry point

Design Decisions

No exceptions — monadic Result<T> error handling throughout
No OpenSSL — all crypto via Windows BCrypt (CNG API)
RAII everything — disk handles auto-close on destruction
Operation queue — changes are queued, previewed, then applied atomically
Removable-only safety — ISO flasher refuses to write to fixed disks
Admin required — raw disk I/O requires elevation; app checks and prompts
SD card recovery uses raw IOCTLs — bypasses volume manager to reach cards Windows won't mount

There's a hidden pentesting/diagnostics tab behind a puzzle. Two ways to unlock it:

The Easy Way

Go to Tools → Unlock Features...
Select the file tools/unlock.key (included in the repo)

The Hard Way

Press F5 while the app is running
Survive the AstroChicken calibration
Complete the Vohaul telemetry sequence
Pass the Arnoid sensor authentication gate

"Don't forget to look UP UP at space."

A riddle. A dark void. And a very particular file that ships with every build — one that looks like garbage in a hex editor, but says something in a text editor. Find it. Read it. Then find the file that only your build can produce.

Those who grew up cleaning floors on the SCS Deepship 86 might feel right at home. The janitor always did have a knack for finding hidden things.

Roger Wilco was here.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! This project exists because security and disk management tools should be free and accessible to everyone.

Fork the repository
Create a feature branch
Submit a pull request

Please note: the third_party/hwdiag/ module is distributed as a pre-compiled library. Source files for that module are not included in the repository.

License

Don't forget to look UP UP at space,

README.md

Setec Partition Wizard For Windows