Editing Disk editor (section)

==History==
Disk editors for [[home computer]]s of the 1980s were often included as part of utility software packages on floppies or [[ROM cartridge|cartridges]]. The latter had the advantage of being instantly available at power-on and after resets, instead of having to be loaded or reloaded 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 at that time). Having the disk editor on cartridge also helped the user avoid editing/damaging the disk editor application disk by mistake.

All 1980s disk editors strove to be better than <code>[[debug (command)|DEBUG]]</code> contained in [[DOS]]. <code>DEBUG</code> could load, edit, and write one or more sectors from a [[Floppy disk|floppy]] or [[Hard disk drive|hard disk]] based on the [[BIOS]]. This permitted simple disk editing tasks such as saving and restoring the [[master boot record]] and other critical sectors, or even changing the active (= boot) partition in the MBR.

In an [[Virtual DOS machine|NTVDM]] under 1993's [[Windows NT]] <code>DEBUG</code> could not access the physical drive with the [[master boot record|MBR]] of the operating system and so was in essence useless as disk editor for the system drive. The [[Resource Kit]] and the support tools for some Windows NT versions contained <code>DSKPROBE</code><ref>{{cite web
|url=https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc736327(v=ws.10).aspx
|title=Dskprobe.exe: DiskProbe
|year=2003
|publisher=[[Microsoft]] Technet
|accessdate=2011-07-05}}</ref> as a very simple disk editor supporting the use and modification of the partition table in the MBR and related tasks.