File Tools
Concatenate: Select several source files that are to be copied into one destination file. The source files are not affected.
Split: This command creates several destination files using the contents of a single source file. Specify a split offset for each destination file. The source file is not affected by this function.
Unify: Select two source files and one destination file. The bytes/words from the source files will be written alternately into the destination file. The first byte/word originates from the source file that was specified first. Use this function to create a file with odd and even bytes/words originating from separate files (e.g. in EPROM programming).
Dissect: Select a source file and two destination files. The bytes/words from the source files will be written alternately into the destination files. The first byte/word will be transfered to the destination file that was specified first. Use this function to create two separate files each containing either the odd or the even bytes/words of the original file (e.g. in EPROM programming).
Create Hard Link: Cool function to create hard links of files in NTFS volumes. Useful for example to play around with hard links when attending NTFS file systems training, or if you would like to add the same image to the same case again, which is only possible under a different name, or if you would like to create a hard link to xwforensics.exe named WinHex.exe, in order to run X-Ways Forensics as WinHex (details). First you select the existing file, then a path and name for the additional hard link.
Copy Sparse: Can copy a selected file and preserves the sparse nature if it is an NTFS sparse file, in the destination file. That means for example when copying a 1 TB skeleton disk image that only has 100 MB of data allocated, the copy process will finish almost instantly because only 100 MB out of 1 TB of data have to be copied. Conventional copy functions do not preserve the sparse nature of a file and copy the amount of data as indicated by the nominal file size, even if most of the data is internally unallocated and read virtually as binary zeroes.
Replicate Directory: Copies a directory with all its files and subdirectories, recursively, and recreates individually NTFS-compressed source files as NTFS-compressed in the respective output folder if supported by the destination file system and any layer in between. The command does not retroactively compress such files after their creation, but writes them immediately as compressed, which is more efficient. However, it still has to copy/send the decompressed amount of data of the source file. Supports overlong paths. Select the source directory first, then specify/create the destination directory. This function is useful for example if you wish to copy or move a case directory, which contains a few NTFS-compressed files that would be inefficient to store as uncompressed. Note that alternatively you can open a case and use the Save As command in the Case Data window for the same effect.
Wipe Securely: This command is used to erase the contents of one or more files irrevocably on magnetic disks, such that they cannot be restored by WinHex itself or other special data recovery software. Each selected file is overwritten with data as selected by the user, shortened to a length of zero and then deleted. The name entry of the file is overwritten as well. Even professional attempts to restore the file will be futile. Therefore this command should be applied to files with confidential contents that are to be destroyed. Options for that. Available in WinHex only, not in X-Ways Forensics.
Delete Recursively: This command can be used to recursively delete a directory with all its subdirectories if they cannot be deleted with Windows Explorer or other Windows tools and commands because of illegal characters in the directory names or because of missing rights (for example if "Trusted Installer" is the owner) if you can get those rights (if you are running WinHex with administrator rights). Note that you cannot apply this command to such a problematic directory itself, only to a parent directory.