Recovery Disk Recommendations ?

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Tue Dec 07, 2010 6:43 am

For the past few days, my computer has only been starting intermittently. I've got everything backed up already and I think I know what the problem is*, but I'd like to get a proper recovery disk set up just in case. In my search for some sort of boot disk, I came across UNetbootin which promises to install essentially any disk image to a flash drive and make it bootable. The only problem with that is I have no idea what I'd like it to install.

I have three criteria, in descending order of importance:

Able to read NTFS drives and copy files to removable media such as the very drive the program/OS is running from. For a recovery disk, this is absolutely critical.
Ability to run other programs, especially anti-virus software of some kind.
Some form of graphic interface. I can navigate the command line, but not usually as fast as I can run in a GUI.

From that list and the primary purpose of UNetbootin, I'm leaning toward a Linux distribution**, but anything meeting the criteria would be much appreciated. Any recommendations?

* Zelda Classic doesn't like Vista.
** I have absolutely no experience with Linux-based systems, thus my confusion over what to install. Did I even use the term "Linux Distribution" correctly there?

mean_liar · Post by **mean_liar** » Tue Dec 07, 2010 7:00 pm

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Surgo · Post by **Surgo** » Wed Dec 08, 2010 1:05 am

I'm not sure how helpful it is for disk cloning, but I use knoppix for every other "recovery" task. I think it has a nice gui, my fiancee's younger brother who never used linux before used it for hard drive rescue, but I usually use its command line.

Blasted · Post by **Blasted** » Wed Dec 08, 2010 2:13 am

I heartily endorse ultimatebootcd.
It's several shades of awesome.

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Wed Dec 08, 2010 3:24 am

Thank you very much for the suggestions! I haven't tried it out yet, but I put ultimatebootcd on a small thumb drive with a few of my most critical files. Right now I'm partitioning my larger USB hard drive so that I can install Ubuntu on it and (hopefully) still copy files to the rest of the drive. This way I'll have two separate recovery sources, one that I can just have with me at all times and another that lets me use the only programs I care about (OpenOffice, Firefox, and Skype) if the computer is relatively intact.

EDIT: I just found out that Parted Magic (on the Ultimate Boot Disk) will run Firefox too. Cool.