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What's On Your Thumbdrive?
Broue Master asks: "Nowadays, we need to support not only people at the office, but friends, family, friends of the family, family of the friends... you name it! They all run Windows to a degree and there are many tools to help you when assisting. Personally, I have a thumb-drive with removable memory cards. One of them has a small bootable Linux, the other one is filled with ready to use Windows utilities (CPU-Z, Ultra-Edit32), DOS utilities I've been collecting over the years, and Unix-style utilities (ps.exe, kill.exe, and others) ported to Windows, without the need for a layer like Cygwin. I also have a copy of the install files for AVG, Spybot, Sygate and the likes. But, even though I think I have many great tools, I'm sure I do not know about a lot of great others to help diagnose and solve problem. So I ask you, what's on your thumb-drive?"
Make sure you have a backup! :)
Process Explorer, Filemon, Autoruns. Some other windows debugging tools too, since I do development on that platform. But those three are generally useful.
See you, space cowboy...
... DOS utilities I've been collecting over the years, and Unix-style utilities (ps.exe, kill.exe, and others) ported to Windows, without the need for a layer like Cygwin
I used to do the same. Install Windows then a metric bucketload of "utilities" (text editors, Sysinternals programs, ActiveState Perl, ActivateState Python, Resource Kits, etc.) that made using Windows bearable. Like some self-fulfilling prophecy. And back when collecting warez was regarded as fashionable and not adolescent, I'd install even more Must Have programs. Now, when possible, I simply skip the nonsense and install Cygwin.
No emulation layer needed? Maybe. In a few isolated cases, perhaps. But if you're going to run a program, you'd prefer a centralised distribution. And then you'll need a real terminal, you'll need a real shell, interpreters, centralised and consistent documentation, and you'll mostly like needed something like SSH to make it all work. Hell, a full Cygwin installation is comparable a typical Linux installation, and larger than Windows, but for an average user, the base install (coreutils, etc.) with SSH and few other packages will more than suffice. A no brainer compared to collect one-off programs from any number of sources.
The consistency is especially nice in that I can go back and forth from Linux or BSD without blinking (same programs and same manpages, right?), no annoying little problems like CR/LF endings get in the way. And as a bonus, I get a perverse pleasure reading the manpages I wrote for Windows programs.
Could do a long post... but easier just to point to this /. post that was already up with MANY MANY good links.
d =10155070
This could be the best post from that article: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=120583&ci
This is probably the only time I would defend the slashdot editors about a dupe.
My thumbdrives are usually empty and ready for use. Mostly they are used for transferring drivers from internet enabled computer to a newly installed computer. Before thumbdrives I used CD-RW's for that purpose and managed to reach maximum write count on several discs. Too bad that I haven't yet managed to make a working bootable thumbdrive that would work on my computers so I still have to use CD-RW's for BIOS upgrades as I don't have any working floppydrives.
- Raynet --> .
And make sure to both backup your backup, and then VERIFY THAT YOU CAN RECOVER YOU DATA. Backup alone is not enough - it's all about redundant backup and verification of you backups!
Horns are really just a broken halo.
Boot it up, check the hardware, check the partitions, replace broken files,
and of course copy the important data off to a USB shoebox drive
(or to a CD/DVD if there's a second drive in the machine)
before doing any more serious maintenance. I've had to do that routine a few times.
The old "Linux Bootable Business Card" was a much smaller distro
that fit onto one of those 50MB truncated-small-CD formats,
and had a bunch of repair tools.
And of course thumbdrives can do the same thing,
but you need to be Really Really careful about viruses,
not only because we're reinventing the floppy disk virus vector,
but because one of the times you really need this sort of tool
is when a machine might be infected - CDROMs are really safe.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
If there's one thing Katrina taught me, it's that losing your entire life would completely suck. Why not take a few minutes now so that you can get back to normal ASAP?
If all you need to rebuild your life can hold on a thumbdrive, I wonder what kind of life you live ;-)
Anyways, why carry it with you? Zip your stuff, encrypt it if you want, and put it on a couple of servers that are in two different cities. If you're gonna get in a Katrina-type situation, rather have your data in some server in Germany than in your pocket.
You just got troll'd!
Nothing. No, really. I use it to transfer files, not as the "Ultimate thing for fixing anything"
> the driver... for the USB stick... on the USB stick?
Don't laugh. I also have the Windows 98 driver for the USB stick on my USB stick. I use Knoppix to copy the driver onto the Windows 98 partition. It's surprising how often copying the driver for the USB stick off the USB stick via Knoppix comes in handy...