Comparison of WinHex License Types and Related Products
License type/program | |||||||||
Features | WinHex Eval. |
WinHex Personal |
WinHex Prof. |
WinHex Specialist |
WinHex Lab Ed. |
X-Ways Imager |
X-Ways Inv. CTR |
X-Ways Investigator |
X-Ways Forensics |
Usage in business & organizations permitted | ^ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Write disk sectors, edit RAM, save large files | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓* | ||||
Hexadecimal editor | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓* | |||
Simultaneously displayed character sets | 1 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 5 | |
WinHex Scripts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓* | |||||
Specialist menu | (✓) | (✓) | (✓) | (✓) | ✓ | ||||
Highlighting of slack space and free space | ✓ | ✓ | (✓) | (✓) | ✓ | ||||
Internal definition of time zones | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
Fast hashing algorithms | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
Multiple threads for logical searches and RVS | 3 | 3 | 16 | ||||||
Availability of a 64-bit edition | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Internal RAID 0/5/5EE/6 reconstruction | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
Windows dynamic disks, LVM2, Apple partitioning | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
Understands FAT12, FAT16, FAT32, TFAT, NTFS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||
Understands exFAT, Ext2/3/4, CDFS, UDF | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
APFS, Btrfs, QNX, XFS, HFS, HFS+/HFSJ/HFSX, ReiserFS, Reiser4, UFS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
XPRESS WofCompressed files, incompressible files with active deduplication in Windows Server | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
Memory dumps of various older Windows versions | ✓ | ||||||||
Disk imaging (raw/dd) and disk cloning | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||
Ability to create skeleton and cleansed images | ✓ | ||||||||
Creation of evidence file containers | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
Ability to open and interpret evidence file containers | (✓)° | (✓)° | (✓)° | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |
Disk image interpretation (raw/DD, VMDK, VHD, VDI) | ✓ | ✓ | (✓)² | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
Creation of .e01 images/evidence files | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||
Interpretation for .e01 images/evidence files | (✓)² | (✓) | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
Mount file systems as a drive letters | ° | ° | ° | ° | ✓ | ✓ | |||
Detection and deactivation of HPAs and DCOs | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
Regular X-Tensions | ✓¹ | ✓ | |||||||
Disk I/O X-Tensions | (✓)† | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
Viewer X-Tensions | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
Image I/O API | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
Viewer component, gallery, preview mode, file mode | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
Internal picture viewing library | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
Registry hive viewer and registry report output | ✓ | ||||||||
Cases, case reports, multi-user collaboration | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
Advanced keyword search and search hit lists | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
Populating an event list / chronological time line | ✓ | ||||||||
Tagging, categorizing and commenting on files | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||
More columns and options in the directory browser | (✓) | (✓) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||
Using hash databases | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||
Creating hash databases | ✓ | ||||||||
H U N D R E D S of additional features | (✓) | (✓) | ✓ | ||||||
other functions (examples, old page) | (✓) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
^ only for evaluation purposes or to
review evidence
file containers containing no more than 1000 objects
° only evidence
file containers
* if you run X-Ways Forensics as WinHex
† you need to create a case first and add the disk/image, but you cannot
save and re-open that case
¹ function XWF_GetRasterImage and PDF conversion not usable
² useful just to see partitions and to copy sectors of an image back to
a storage device
Personal licenses for WinHex are available at a reduced
price for non-commercial purposes only, in a non-business,
non-institutional, and non-government environment. Professional licenses
for WinHex allow usage of the software in any environment (at home, in a
company, in an organization, or in public administration).
You can upgrade existing perpetual licenses of certain types to a superior license type. Offers for that are usually available when you query your license status. The following types of upgrades are generally possible:
From → To | WinHex prof. |
Investi- gator |
Forensics (perpetual) |
WinHex personal | ✓ | ✓ | |
WinHex professional | ✓ | ||
WinHex specialist (perpetual) | ✓ | ||
Investigator CTR | ✓ | ✓ | |
Investigator | ✓ | ||
Imager (perpetual) | ✓ |