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) | ✓ |
