Disk Utility

A fast terminal disk utility for Windows, written in Rust with a Claude Code / OpenCode-style TUI (ratatui). Create, format, erase disks and write bootable images — from the keyboard.

Install

One-liner (PowerShell):

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/viorizz/diskutility/main/install.ps1 | iex

Manual: download diskutility.exe from the latest release (verify with checksums.txt).

winget: (once the package is accepted into the community repository)

winget install viorizz.diskutility

From source:

cargo install --git https://github.com/viorizz/diskutility

Stay up to date: the TUI shows a banner when a new release is out — press Shift+U to download it (SHA-256 verified) and restart into the new version right there, or toggle auto-update on launch in the same dialog. From a script, diskutility --update does the same.

╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ ✦ Disk Utility  v0.1.0   format · erase · write images  ● admin  │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
╭ Disks (3) ─────────────────────────╮╭ Details ──────────────────╮
│ ⛨  0 CT2000T705SSD3  1.8 TB NVMe   ││ Name    SATECHI DISK      │
│    1 CT4000P3PSSD8   3.6 TB NVMe   ││ Disk    #2 · USB · RAW    │
│ ▸  2 SATECHI DISK    1.8 TB USB    ││ ...                       │
╰────────────────────────────────────╯╰───────────────────────────╯
 ↑↓ select · f format · e erase · i write image · r rescan · q quit

Format presets

Preset	Filesystem	Scheme	Notes
Windows	NTFS	GPT	journaling, permissions, >4 GB files
macOS	exFAT	GPT	full R/W on macOS + Windows (APFS/HFS+ require a Mac)
Linux	ext4	GPT	real ext4, created through WSL 2
PlayStation 5	exFAT	MBR	USB media/backup drives (game storage is formatted by PS5)
Universal	FAT32 / exFAT	MBR	FAT32 ≤ 32 GB, exFAT above; TVs, cameras, consoles

Operations

• Format — clean, partition (GPT/MBR), format, assign a drive letter.
• Quick erase — destroy the partition table (fast).
• Secure erase — zero-fill every sector with live speed/ETA (raw \\.\PhysicalDriveN writes).
• Write image — dd-style sector writer for .iso / .img / .raw / .bin / .wic, followed by an automatic bit-for-bit read-back verification.
• Benchmark (b) — sequential + random 4K speeds with a live graph. The read benchmark is non-destructive and safe on any disk; the full read/write benchmark wipes the target first. All I/O is unbuffered (FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING), so numbers measure the disk, not the cache.
• Capacity test (b) — h2testw-style pattern write + verify that exposes counterfeit "fake capacity" flash drives. Quick mode samples the whole address space in minutes; full mode proves every byte.
• Surface scan (b) — non-destructive read of every sector that pinpoints unreadable 4 KiB blocks.
• Health (h) — SMART wear, temperature, power-on hours and error counts (needs an elevated terminal; USB bridges usually block passthrough).
• Hex viewer (x) — read-only sector browser: ← → step, PgUp/PgDn jump 256 sectors, g goes to a sector or a byte offset (1.5G), and known structures (MBR, GPT header, NTFS/exFAT/FAT boot sectors) are labelled. diskutility --hex <disk> [sector] dumps one from the command line.
• Backup (s) — full sector image of a disk to an .img file, with free space and same-disk checks. Restore it onto any disk with i.
• Clone (d) — sector-for-sector disk-to-disk copy with the partition table written last (no mid-copy automount), followed by verification.
• Manage (m) — assign/change/remove drive letters, rename a volume, bring a disk online/offline, safely eject, clear the read-only flag. Nothing here erases data; protected disks are refused.
• Automatic backups (a) — schedule a full image of the selected disk every N minutes/hours, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. The app registers a Windows Task Scheduler job (DiskUtility Backup) that runs diskutility --scheduled-backup elevated while you are logged on — nothing needs to stay open or autostart. The disk is matched by serial and size (disk numbers shift), images go to your saved backup destination (n) as auto-<disk>-<serial>-<timestamp>.img, and older images beyond the keep count are pruned. If the disk is not connected at run time, nothing happens and the log says so. When a run finishes, fails or is stopped, a Windows notification tells you the outcome ("notify": false in config.json turns it off).
• Backups panel (Shift+B) — every backup currently running, whether it is the scheduled job in its hidden process or a manual one in another diskutility window: disk, image, a progress gauge, speed, ETA, elapsed time and pid. Select one and press x to stop it. The panel also shows the registered schedule and any interrupted images waiting to be resumed. While a background backup runs, a one-line status bar with the gauge sits above the footer. Backups never overlap by accident: the scheduled job skips its run while another backup is live, and the s menu warns you and asks for confirmation before starting a second one.
• Pause scheduled backups (p in the Backups panel or in the schedule editor) — for 1 hour, 6 hours, 24 hours, 7 days, or until you resume them. The task stays registered; each run just exits without doing anything until the pause lifts. Handy when the NAS is full or you are about to unplug the disk. A backup already running is not affected.
• Resumable backups — an image is written as name.img.partial and only renamed to name.img once complete, so a .img file is always a finished backup. If a backup is stopped (x in the panel, Esc, a crash, a reboot), the next backup of the same disk into the same folder — scheduled or manual — continues from where it left off instead of starting over. The earlier part reflects the disk as it was then, so resume only makes sense for a disk you are not writing to in between.

Safety

• The Windows system/boot disk is refused by default, at the UI layer and inside every worker script.
• The disk hosting the running executable is refused by default.
• Every destructive action requires typing the disk number in a confirmation dialog.
• Writes require an elevated (administrator) terminal; otherwise the app is read-only.
• Safety override (u): for experts, protections can be disabled for the session by typing UNLOCK in a warning dialog. The header turns red with a ⛨ PROTECTIONS OFF badge, and acting on a protected disk then requires typing DESTROY <disk number> to confirm. Press u again to re-lock.
• Internal (non-USB/SD) disks are not blocked, but the confirmation dialog flags them and demands the DESTROY <n> phrase, and lists the volumes and used space on the target so a wrong pick is obvious.
• Device identity is re-checked right before anything is written: the target's serial number, size and model must still match what you confirmed. Disk numbers shift when drives are plugged/unplugged; if the list changed under you, the operation is refused and nothing is touched.
• An image that lives on the disk being written is refused.
• PowerShell is always launched by absolute path (%SystemRoot%\System32\...) with -NoProfile and a module path pinned to system directories, and every script receives only integers and quoted/sanitized strings.
• Updates (Shift+U, --update, or auto-update on launch) download only from this repository's GitHub releases, verify the SHA-256 against the release's checksums.txt, and check the new binary runs before swapping it in. The start-up update check is the TUI's only network access; disable it (and auto-update) with --no-update-check or DISKUTILITY_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1.
• Scheduled backups are plain Task Scheduler jobs you can inspect or delete in Task Scheduler (taskschd.msc); the command line they run is visible there. They only read the source disk.

Build & run

No Visual Studio needed — just the Rust toolchain (rustup). Build from VS Code / Cursor (Ctrl+Shift+B, tasks included) or any terminal:

cargo build --release          # → target/release/diskutility.exe
.\target\release\diskutility.exe          # TUI (run elevated for write ops)
.\target\release\diskutility.exe --list   # read-only disk listing, no TUI

Releasing

Every release carries detailed patch notes, kept in CHANGELOG.md. To cut a release: bump version in Cargo.toml, add a ## vX.Y.Z — date section to CHANGELOG.md describing every change, commit, then push the vX.Y.Z tag. The release workflow builds the exe, extracts that section as the GitHub release body (GitHub's auto-generated comparison link is appended), and fails if the section is missing. packaging/sync-release-notes.ps1 pushes the changelog onto already-published releases (needs gh auth login). A winget job then submits the version to microsoft/winget-pkgs when the WINGET_TOKEN secret is configured — see packaging/winget.

Troubleshooting

Everything the app does is logged: every PowerShell script it runs, the full stdout/stderr, exit codes, and each operation step — timestamped in diskutility.log next to the exe (falls back to %TEMP%). Press c anywhere (including inside a failed operation dialog) to copy the entire session log to the clipboard, ready to paste into a bug report.

Write-protected drives: the prep step clears the read-only attribute with Set-Disk, retries with diskpart attributes disk clear readonly, and fails with a clear message if the enclosure has a hardware lock.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 (uses PowerShell Storage cmdlets + raw device I/O)
• Administrator rights for anything destructive
• WSL 2 only if you use the Linux/ext4 preset