Using 'od' to see partition contents in hex

Do cd /tmp;
dd if=/dev/zero of=e2fs bs=1024 count=10000;
mke2fs -F e2fs;
od -Ax -tx4 e2fs.

To check partitions:
od -Ax -tx4 /dev/hda7


(This creates an empty ext2 filesystem in the file /tmp/e2fs, and prints its contents.)