HxD - Freeware Hex Editor and Disk Editor (2025)

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HxD is a carefully designed and fast hex editor which, additionally to raw disk editing and modifying of main memory (RAM), handles files of any size.

The easy to use interface offers features such as searching and replacing, exporting, checksums/digests, insertion of byte patterns, a file shredder, concatenation or splitting of files, statistics and much more.

Editing works like in a text editor with a focus on a simple and task-oriented operation, as such functions were streamlined to hide differences that are purely technical.
For example, drives and memory are presented similar to a file and are shown as a whole, in contrast to a sector/region-limited view that cuts off data which potentially belongs together. Drives and memory can be edited the same way as a regular file including support for undo. In addition memory-sections define a foldable region and inaccessible sections are hidden by default.

Furthermore a lot of effort was put into making operations fast and efficient, instead of forcing you to use specialized functions for technical reasons or arbitrarily limiting file sizes. This includes a responsive interface and progress indicators for lengthy operations.

Features

Available as a portable and installable edition
RAM-Editor
- To edit the main memory
- Memory sections are tagged with data-folds
Disk-Editor (Hard disks, floppy disks, ZIP-disks, USB flash drives, CDs, ...)
- RAW reading and writing of disks and drives
- for Win9x, WinNT and higher
Instant opening regardless of file-size
- Up to 8EB; opening and editing is very fast
Liberal but safe file sharing with other programs
Flexible and fast searching/replacing for several data types
- Data types: text (including Unicode), hex-values, integers and floats
- Search direction: Forward, Backwards, All (starting from the beginning)
File compare (simple)
View data in Ansi, DOS, EBCDIC and Macintosh character sets
Checksum-Generator: Checksum, CRCs, Custom CRC, SHA-1, SHA-512, MD5, ...
Exporting of data to several formats
- Source code (Pascal, C, Java, C#, VB.NET)
- Formatted output (plain text, HTML, Richtext, TeX)
- Hex files (Intel HEX, Motorola S-record)
Insertion of byte patterns
File tools
- File shredder for safe file deletion
- Splitting or concatenating of files
Basic data analysis (statistics)
- Graphical representation of the byte/character distribution
- Helps to identify the data type of a selection
Byte grouping
- 1, 2, 4, 8 or 16 bytes packed together into one column
"Hex only" or "text only"-modes
Progress-window for lengthy operations
- Shows the remaining time
- Button to cancel
Modified data is highlighted
Unlimited undo
"Find updates..."-function
Easy to use and modern interface
Goto address
Printing
Overwrite or insert mode
Cut, copy, paste insert, paste write
Clipboard support for other hex editors
- Visual Studio/Visual C++, WinHex, HexWorkshop, RegEdit, ...
Bookmarks
- Ctrl+Shift+Number (0-9) sets a bookmark
- Ctrl+Number (0-9) goes to a bookmark
Navigating to nibbles with Ctrl+Left or Ctrl+Right
Flicker free display and fast drawing

Version	2.5.0.0 (February 11, 2021) What's new?
OS	Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7, 8 or 10
	Download page

Version	1.7.7.0 (April 3, 2009) What's new?
OS	Windows 95, 98, ME, NT 4, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, or 7
	Download page

License

HxD is free of charge for private and commercial use. Selling HxD is not allowed. Distributing it as part of magazine addon CDs / DVDs / other media or putting it on download portals or private websites is allowed and welcome. For details, please see the HxD License.

What's new

Complete change log for HxD

Notes

Disk-Editor

To use the disk editor under Windows NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/7 and higher you have to be an administrator or have the appropriate privileges.

Starting with Vista you need to manually unmount the hard disk to successfully write to it, or in other words: make sure the disk you edit has no mounted file system. More details in this forum thread. A system drive (the one where Windows is installed on) cannot be written to while Windows is running. In order to still accomplish that, you will have to execute HxD from a boot CD/DVD like PartBE or VistaPE and edit the system disk from there.

Windows NT 4

If the RAM-editor doesn't show any processes under Windows NT 4 you most likely don't have PSAPI.DLL installed on your system. You can get it from Microsoft (PSAPI.DLL Download) and copy the DLL into the %windir%\System directory.
HxD was only tested for Windows NT 4 SP 6, though it should work with versions prior to service pack 6.

Windown NT 4 SP1 and newer are also supported, if WININET.DLL is added, through IE 3.02 or newer.

Articles about HxD

How to use HxD as a Disk Editor to save Sectors as Binary Files (by Daniel B. Sedory)

Removal of rootkits (Italian article by megalab.it)

Translators

Thanks to the translators, HxD is available in many languages.