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USB Drives — Recovery?

Posted by kdawson on from the just-for-the-flash-of-it dept.

pipingguy writes "Now that 'thumb drives' are so inexpensive (a 1-GB SD card with USB housing/adapter costs about $25), which programs does Slashdot recommend for system recovery? What is the need-to-have software? Additionally, I'd like to get some input on the durability of the newish card reader / adapter devices, as some of them seem to be pretty flimsy (but very useful/flexible as opposed to the old fixed-capacity NAND devices)."

147 comments

  1. WinPE by Utopia · · Score: 4, Informative

    My USB recovery tool is Vista WinPE

    You can get it from the WAIK :
    http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=c7d4bc6d-15f3-4284-9123-679830d629f2&Displa yLang=en

    1. Re:WinPE by Tetravus · · Score: 1

      Nice. I thought that they'd killed the WinPE distro some years back... heck, I was only able to get a copy for use at work by digging through old Microsoft Select subscription CDs as MS _did_ pull it from the download site.

      Having a bootable image of Windows is nice, I don't get why they don't advertise it more. In fact, bootable images in general are great. They're what convinced me to switch to Ubuntu for my primary personal system, and allowed me to easily lobby my superiors to consider a Linux rollout instead of a Vista hardware / software upgrade in the near future.

    2. Re:WinPE by thona · · Score: 1

      It is not only not pulled, but now even widely advertised. WinPE is THE isntall method for Vista - in fact, even if you isntall vista from DVD, it first starts a WinPE image to format the hard disc etc. There is FULL documentation AND all the rights to use that :-) Thomas

  2. Thumb Drive by black6host · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As far as thumb drives go I'd recommend the Titanium Cruzer which comes into up to 2 gig models. I keep mine on my keychan which is outiside on my harley 365 days a year. Rain or shine, and here in Florida we get a lot of rain. I've pretty much abused it much more than I expected to and it's never failed me once. I'll leave others to comment on what to put on it but if you're loadking up a pice of crap that's what your going to have just when you need it at your clients office. Quality tools pay for themselves.

    Regards,
    Fleet

    1. Re:Thumb Drive by thc69 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Who's the jerk that modded parent Offtopic? kdawson asked "Additionally, I'd like to get some input on the durability of the newish card reader / adapter devices, as some of them seem to be pretty flimsy" and parent wrote that those devices are indeed flimsy and a Titanium Cruzer has survived a rough life.

      Personally, I use a cheap Memorex Traveldrive and it survives my pants pocket. I've got USBified versions of Cygwin, Opera, Firefox, Thunderbird, putty, WinSCP, VNC, etc.

      However, more importantly, I keep handy a UBCD with stuff I've added (such as a mirror of the pre-microsoft www.sysinternals.com, my favorite malware removal tools, locked file deleters, install files for Firefox/Thunderbird/OpenOffice, etc). CDs are infection-resistant, work on failing or older systems where USB doesn't, are waterproof, and cost nearly nothing so I can destroy/lose/leave with client without worrying about it.

      There was a recent Ask Slashdot about what to put on a CD for system recovery. I'm sure the answers there apply well to USB drives too.

      --
      Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
    2. Re:Thumb Drive by swv3752 · · Score: 1

      An Ultimate boot CD is a great tool. I have a regular Cruzer with Oo.org, 7Zip, PuTTY, and Firefox. Even though it is only plastic, it is solid. I also have an old Sony Microvault that has been through the wash a few times. Most flash drives are pretty durable.

      The most sturdy of the card readers I have seen was the sony Memorystick Microvault. It was both a flash drive and a card reader. Most card readers are pretty flimsy. besides, you still can only have at most 4 GB, so why not just get a more durable flash drive?

      --
      Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
    3. Re:Thumb Drive by wyohman · · Score: 1

      I like the Titanium as well but after about a year, the connector no longer latches in the out position.

      Cheers.

    4. Re:Thumb Drive by tehcyder · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I keep mine on my keychan which is outiside on my harley 365 days a year. Rain or shine
      Aren't you worried about your bike being stolen if you leave the keys in it all the time?
      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    5. Re:Thumb Drive by winnabago · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Additionally, how does he use the USB drive if it is always connected to the motorcycle?!

      --
      Dammit Otto, you have lupus.
  3. the same ones you used before... by skiingyac · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...when you copied to CD/DVD/FTP/SMB/whatever.

    why is this on the front page?

    1. Re:the same ones you used before... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      http://www.pendrivelinux.com/

      A good site offering information and links for a variety of USB bootable linux options if your system supports USB booting. There are a lot of sites offering complicated instructions on how to boot linux from a USB key, this one is fairly simple and painless. Once booted up you can copy off critical data unless the HDD is really dead.

    2. Re:the same ones you used before... by pipingguy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My question was based on the fact that these drives are so cheap and large now that you can actually fit a Linux distribution on it, plus a lot of other stuff for thirty bucks. Yes, I have seen the past related Slashdot stories, but the concept of swapping-out SD cards with a thumb drive-sized adapter is new to me.

      Or are you claiming that technology stands still and therefore "read the FAQ, luser"?

    3. Re:the same ones you used before... by Lord+Ender · · Score: 3, Informative
      why is this on the front page?

      This may be new to you, but technology changes rapidly. "What's the best tool right now for X" can be asked quarterly and have different answers each time, in some cases.
      --
      A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
    4. Re:the same ones you used before... by Tim+C · · Score: 1

      That's true, but we had a "What recovery CDs do you carry with you?" askslashdot just the other day. What does this bring to the discussion that that didn't, other than a tighter size constraint? (Although personally, if I were to carry recovery tools around with me on CD, I'd not want to carry more than 1-2 CDs anyway, making the constraint comparable...)

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
    5. Re:the same ones you used before... by skiingyac · · Score: 1

      Or are you claiming that technology stands still So a 1GB or so USB stick or SD/CF/etc card is about $20. A 700MB CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW, etc. is around $0.10 to $1 and has been for a few years. So, yes, cheap ~1GB portable storage is not new. Granted a USB stick or card is more convenient than a CD/DVD, but the stuff you'd put on it is pretty much the same since the capacity is not much bigger and most tools aren't very large anyway.
    6. Re:the same ones you used before... by skiingyac · · Score: 1

      thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one.

      Nothing personal against the submitter BTW, its more a criticism of the editors.

    7. Re:the same ones you used before... by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 2, Insightful

      While most of the software is the same, what this adds is the potential for software that rewrites, and in general just better potential to run things straight from the usb stick. With CDs you tend to want to just copy/install to harddrive to run, which isn't always an option.

      Personally, I have my usb thumbdrive plugged in the back of my router and used for storage, and am running samba on the router to share it with the network.

      I havn't actually bothered to put much on it yet, but its nice to know I have the capability if I need to. Plus with 2gb for $30, how can you go wrong? If only that sale wasn't limited to 1 per customer..

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    8. Re:the same ones you used before... by skiingyac · · Score: 1

      I don't think anything that can be run straight from a USB stick can't be also run from a CD... unless you have an example?

      Also, there is actually a *LOT* of danger in software that rewrites, or having your recovery CD/stick/etc be rewriteable. I'd predict something like:

      1) Machine A gets a virus
      2) use Machine B to make recovery USB stick
      3) put stick in Machine A.
      4) Tool doesn't work and Machine A infects USB stick
      5) put USB stick back in Machine B to add more tools
      6) USB Stick infects Machine B.

      So, I would say stick to plain old CD-R's, and lock the disk so no more sessions can be written. Or, make a CD that just brings up the network and then grabs the latest copy of all your scripts, tools, etc. via a read-only FTP login.

    9. Re:the same ones you used before... by LunaticTippy · · Score: 1

      You need to turn off autorun. Step 6 only happens if you use autorun or do something stupid.

      --
      Man, you really need that seminar!
    10. Re:the same ones you used before... by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 1

      The only example is something that would be pretty silly to do, but you could keep a disk image and qemu/vmware/virtualpc/whatever on there. Will probably degrade your usb drive pretty quick, but would not work on a cd-r.

      I guess just anything where you'd want session/settings to stay portable rather than stick with the computer, like firefox with all your cookies staying on the drive instead of having to disable them all the time.

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    11. Re:the same ones you used before... by skiingyac · · Score: 1

      Step 6 only happens if you use autorun or do something stupid. So does getting a virus. We don't need recovery tools at all since only stupid people will need them!
    12. Re:the same ones you used before... by unitron · · Score: 1
      "why is this on the front page?"

      How about because you can skim over the replies that are stuff you already know until you hit one where someone has gone off on a tangent that generates replies that tell you interesting stuff which you didn't know?

      If you have no interest in the topic, expend your time on something else. It's not as though this one story stinks up the entire front page, unlike, say, a Jon Katz posting. :-)

      --

      I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.

  4. How about... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/27/02 9209

    http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/04/00 59256

  5. tar by rehabdoll · · Score: 2, Informative

    tar.

    1. Re:tar by DittoBox · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's not offtopic, it's just a woefully inadequate description of what he carries on his rescue disk. From the GNU Tar man page:

      "GNU tar creates and manipulates archives which are actually collections of many other files; the program provides users with an organized and systematic method for controlling a large amount of data. The name "tar" originally came from the phrase "Tape ARchive", but archives need not (and these days, typically do not) reside on tapes."

      http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/i ndex.html

      --
      Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
    2. Re:tar by jamesborr · · Score: 3, Informative

      If you are on a Mac, and don't mind using a larger disk for backup, nothing is better then Carbon Copy Cloner. Lost an 80 GB internal drive on my laptop once, Apple had it replaced withing 3 days, I booted from my backup disk (cloned from the original on a weekly basis), copied back, rebooted and within 30 minutes was back to where I was a couple of days before the disk blew up. No restoration activities required, no involved thinking and strategizing, just 30 minutes of unattended, unthinking effort.

    3. Re:tar by The+Great+Pretender · · Score: 1

      I thought that he was just using the wonderful British colloquial phrase for 'thanks', oh and no I didn't mod him.

      --
      A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
    4. Re:tar by value_added · · Score: 1

      I thought that he was just using the wonderful British colloquial phrase for 'thanks', oh and no I didn't mod him.

      Even funnier is that anyone accustomed to using tar (dump, instead of tar, gets my vote) isn't in the habit of performing "system recovery" in the sense that the question was originally posed, and there is no "need-to-have-software" that isn't already available.

    5. Re:tar by frdmfghtr · · Score: 1

      I had a similar situation arise, but I "lost" the original 40 GB drive when I replaced the drive in my iBook it with an 80 GB unit (yes, I did it myself, and didn't lose any of the bazillion screws I had to remove).

      Fortunately (and wisely) I backed up my drive weekly (sometimes more often) using Synchronize X! Pro which will make a bootable backup of your drive. Now, I have a external USB drive so I can't boot from it (Macs won't boot from USB apparently, but will boot from Firewaire drives) so all I did was boot using the recovery CD, partition the new drive, do a straight copy from the backup drive to the new one, and reboot--wham-o, machine is back in action.

      That's what I like about OS X--all I did was do a straight copy of the old drive contents to the new drive and reboot. The backup data on the external drive is in a usable form (standard HFS+ journaled file format) so I can cherry-pick files off of it as needed simply by copying the files via the Finder. No specialized data recovery software, and I can manually pick out files as needed, if needed. None of this running multitudes of installation programs to recover the system.

      But to be on-topic, I'll second others whom say to have the same stuff you would keep on a recovery CD--registration keys, drivers, and installation files for hardware-specific installations (touch pads, video, etc.) Everything else had damn well better be backed up somewhere else--chances are that you will have too much to keep on a flash drive.

      BTW, has Knoppix been put on a flash drive and used to boot a system?

      That's enough rambling from me on the topic.

      --
      Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
    6. Re:tar by galactic_hitchhiker · · Score: 1

      Check out Damn Small Linux ( I am not kidding ). DSL is a derivative of Knoppix and fits in 50-100 MB ( again, I am not kidding ).
      I formatted a 1Gb Sandisk and loaded the DSL distro on it. I have more than 900 MB to load data.
      I have used it to boot my Laptop and the network etc works "out of the chip" so to speak.

    7. Re:tar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you could end up looking like a fool if your PC is infected with the deadly "feathers" virus...

    8. Re: tar by gidds · · Score: 1
      Carbon Copy Cloner has saved my bacon, too. But it's not perfect -- like the command-line tool 'ditto' which it uses, it doesn't preserve BSD flags, creation date, or HFS+ extended attributes.

      There's a pretty good analysis of the various tools available here. The only tool it recommends highly is SuperDuper, which I've since switched to, and had good results with.

      (There's another analysis here, which has more mixed feelings.)

      --

      Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.

    9. Re:tar by _Hiro_ · · Score: 1

      We really need a (+0, Bad Pun) mod... That way those of us who enjoy bad puns can use it to adjust mod up, those who don't can mod it down...

      --
      -Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
  6. System recovery? by trmj · · Score: 5, Informative

    To start with, there are even less expensive methods than the one you mention, the first of which that comes to mind being the $10 1gig usb flash drives at microcenter.

    On to the bit about recovery. You say system recovery, but use those words to link to a usb flash drive. Did you mean recovering data from said flash drive? If so, the data on those works the same way it does on a hard drive. The system deletes a file from the tree, but leaves the data intact until written over. Any standard undelete program will recover files you've simply deleted.

    As for backing up your system to a flash drive, I wouldn't recommend it unless you're running a small enough footprint to fit on one. The 8gig flash drive are getting to be reasonably priced, but that's still not enough for most full system backups.

    --
    Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
    1. Re:System recovery? by harbichidian · · Score: 2, Funny

      ...$10 1gig usb flash drives at microcenter.

      This is going to turn into the first slashbuying in history, as the entire audience of slashdot grabs enough for everyone on their holiday list.

    2. Re:System recovery? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      [...] recovering data from said flash drive? If so, the data on those works the same way it does on a hard drive. The system deletes a file from the tree, but leaves the data intact until written over. Any standard undelete program will recover files you've simply deleted.

      I do not think this is entirely accurate. I have had a USB flash drive with multiple data files lose its index/tree/paritition file (whatever you want to call it) after the drive got removed from the computer. On the next insertion to the computer wanted to format it. Anyways, tried throwing various undelete/parition/file recovery programs at it. None of them saw data on the drive anywhere. It was as though a USB flash drive has some simple electrical command that wipes its entire contents instantly, and that command had been inadvertently sent. (No, it was not hardware failure. The same drive worked just fine after a fresh formatting.)

      Yes, it is more expensive, but I like the super thin and small PQI brand: 2GB for $40.

    3. Re:System recovery? by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      No, stuff like that has happened because of Slashdot going way back. Radio Shack closed out this little LCE 'pen' Oscilloscope, for instance, back in about 1998... if I am remembering the details. It disappeared from stock all over the country.

  7. Fire wire harddisk by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    are better when you need to restore a image to a system

    1. Re:Fire wire harddisk by m50d · · Score: 1

      How? Being a little bit faster does not make up for being nowhere near as widely supported as USB2, and is it even possible for a PC to boot from firewire?

      --
      I am trolling
    2. Re:Fire wire harddisk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Strong argument. Cohesive conclusion. +3 insightful, I agree.

  8. photorec by porksoda · · Score: 5, Informative

    PhotoRec is data recovery software specifically designed for recovering lost photo files on corrupted memory sticks (CompactFlash, Memory Stick, SecureDigital, SmartMedia, Microdrive, MMC, USB Memory Drives...)

    DOS, Win, Linux, Mac versions available here.

    1. Re:photorec by Richard+W.M.+Jones · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I will second this. Photorec is excellent - it saved my bacon when my brother-in-law stuck his camera memory card into my computer and the card was accidentally formatted.

      However I have seen other failure modes in memory cards where somehow the card "loses" all the sectors. Linux reports the device as being 0 bytes long. I don't know of any software which can recover from that sort of an error. Please let me know if there is some because I have one card which does just that.

      Rich.

      --
      libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
  9. TestDesk by Yaksha42 · · Score: 3, Informative

    I've had good luck with TestDisk when a partition has been deleted.

    I was formatting a PC and installing a fresh copy of XP on it. I had backed up all my data onto my thumb drive first. However, when the option to choose the partition to install XP came up, it displayed my thumb drives 1GB partition. I had forgot I had left the thumb drive plugged in, not realizing what the partition was I deleted it (but didn't format). After realizing my mistake I used TestDisk and it recovered all my data.

    1. Re:TestDesk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've had excellent experience with Testdisk. My mom had a coworker come to her with a USB flash drive. She had plugged it into her Winbox, and a message popped up saying "This drive needs to be reformatted." She clicked yes, and BAM, all of her un-backed-up files were gone. She went to the tech support people at her place of work, and since they had better things to do, told her she was out of luck.

      My mom gave the drive to me and asked if there was anything I could do. I had never had any exprience with restoring flash drives, so I was clueless on where to go. I went to gentoo-portage.com and searched for "disk" since all of my other usual methods were extinguished (even a couple of proprietary windows apps went over the drive a couple of times and couldn't find any records of files or any recognizable patterns, nor any filesystem records.)

      I installed testdisk and fumbled around for an hour. I was just about to give up when I found a screen that had a list of very recognizable file names - I quickly restored that specific record of the file system, and every single file was restored without error. Testdisk also restored a bunch of random files that took up the rest of the free space on the drive, but I figured that's just the price for reformatting a flash drive. I deleted the random files, backed up the good files to cd and gave the flash drive back to my mom. I then sternly told her to tell her coworker "NEVER rely on a flash drive for secure storage. Always backup."

    2. Re:TestDesk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      "She went to the tech support people at her place of work, and since they had better things to do, told her she was out of luck."

      As an IT worker, never assume that 'we' necessarily have 'better things to do'. Where-as it may appear that it is our own descretion to assist people with a non-business related task.

      In most cases we are explicitly restricted from assisting any employee from non-business related tasks. I am not sure you meant to be derogatory with your statement - but bear in mind you may offend more with your calous speculation than is your intent - especially when the reverse of what your speculations are more-often-than-not correct.

    3. Re:TestDesk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I do apologize for my overly broad comments. I'm a low-level tech support guy myself for a fairly good amount of people (part time stuff, I'm in for a MECE degree.)

      Anyway, I was trying to be as vague as possible about the IT people, but if you wish, I can be more specific and more harsh. I'm speaking of IT support for the special eduation branch of the school district in Houston. My mom has had a VERY large amount of problems with her laptop, and every time, without fail, they have not been able to help her. She had a hard drive die, they told her they couldn't do anything; I got everything off in 20 minutes.

      JUST recently (IE, last Tuesday), they issued my mom a laptop that didn't come equiped with Office; she didn't find out about this until after I took a look at it and restored her documents/pictures/settings to it. Of course, she had to take it back to them to install a version of Office; they proceeded to do a full factory reinstall of the laptop without mention to my mom. Think about that for a second: if you didn't have a tech guy in the family, and you were an average teacher, what would you have done if you dropped your laptop off at, say, a best buy, to install Office only to return to find EVERYTHING you had on the laptop lost.

      So, don't worry, I have the utmost respect for most "IT workers," whatever that encompasses. I especially relate to those that do the "scummy" work for low pay for hours on end; I do it too. I do, however, mean to offend you if you happen to be a tech support guy for special ed in HISD. Those guys are idiots.

      However, everyone else, I apoligize for any wrong impressions! And testdisk works!

  10. Bootable Flash Drive with Debian installed. by lky · · Score: 4, Informative

    The first thing I would do is build a self-contained Debian install, then you can add any tools from the Debian repositories with a simple apt-get.

    For examples of how to install and configure everything check out the Howtos and Automated Installer at Feraga.com.

    1. Re:Bootable Flash Drive with Debian installed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That's not very informative. Cannot expect mod points by throwing a very general suggestion to install something. I could say: First I would install Windows and then find tools to install on it for *whatever* question you asked.

    2. Re:Bootable Flash Drive with Debian installed. by shofutex · · Score: 1

      Or just use DSL

    3. Re:Bootable Flash Drive with Debian installed. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Why bother? 1GB is more than enough for a full install of an OS and tools; it wasn't too many years ago that my only hard drive was 1GB, and it triple-booted Linux, Windows NT and DOS.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    4. Re:Bootable Flash Drive with Debian installed. by UncleRage · · Score: 1

      Have you looked at Damn Small lately?

      What exactly leads you to the conclusion that it is not a full OS and tools install?

      Granted, you may wish to add an additional tool or so... but DSL is pretty damn complete.

      --
      #SickNotWeak
  11. Cross platform by tcopeland · · Score: 1

    One nice thing about these drives is that the filesystems can be read by any OS without hassles. This means we can include both a Mac and a PC binary (and a Linux one, once I get cracking on that) for indi on a drive and you can move your data from machine to machine with nary a hitch. Good times.

    --
    The Army reading list
    1. Re:Cross platform by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Except on Windows. I have one USB drive that will crash Windows when it's plugged in, and another that Windows won't attach until I install it's "driver". Both work flawlessly out of the box on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Mac OSX, without any special setup.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    2. Re:Cross platform by iangoldby · · Score: 1
      One nice thing about these drives is that the filesystems can be read by any OS without hassles.

      The reason that most of these drives can be accessed from any OS is that they are usually formatted by the manufacturer with the FAT16 or FAT32 filing system, which is indeed accessible from almost any OS.

      Equally, I could take a 250GB USB hard disk, format it with FAT32, and access the files from almost any OS just as I can a thumb drive.

      Just to labour the point slightly, I could reformat one of these drives as HFS+ and it would only be readable on a Mac, or as NTFS for Windows only, or ext2 for Linux only. (Yes I know you can read some of these formats across platforms, but the tools are not necessarily installed by default.)

      Of course, using the FAT filing system means that most file attributes from other filesystems will get lost when a file is copied there.
  12. Recovery is for idiots that forgot backups by javanree · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why bother waisting time with recovery procedures? Do a proper backup and make a quick install CD, containing needed drivers/apps and such... I made a DVD with my favorite Linux distro, in a subdir a list of RPM's and the important config files , all the extra RPM packages needed are in a private repository online.

  13. ubcd by Meltir · · Score: 5, Informative

    Its not exactly designed for thumb drives, but its saved my hide numerous times:
    http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

    Im pretty sure that if you can boot of a thumb drive, it wouldnt take too much to make this work.

    I have a copy of the latest version with me at all times, in my wallet, on a mini-cdr.

    All freeware tools, including a full fledged linux (Insert linux i think its called),
    dozens of msdos utils, net stuff, iirc there were bios flashers in there too at some point.

  14. For windows by earnest+murderer · · Score: 2, Informative

    Xcopy alternatively xxcopy if you're nasty.

    Stuff too big? Pipe it into an archiver.

    Seriously, proprietary backup applications have been obfuscating and fucking up what these have been doing for years reliably for 99 percent of users.

    --
    Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
    1. Re:For windows by dreamlax · · Score: 1

      That will only work when copying to particular media. Backup applications go further too, in that they will make sure all the files are readable before trying to copy, showing you a graphical representation of how much data has been backed up, and so on. Not everyone likes to type on a command line interface, and not everyone knows what a command line interface is.

      Programs like Leopard's Time Machine work differently again, showing you snapshots of your hard drive that were taken each day from when you first started backing up. If you knew a file existed on January the 4th, you can simply go to January the 4th and retreive it. I guess it's quite similar to an subversion repository.

      xcopy is good if you simply want to back up your "My Documents" folder, but tools like the Time Machine make it easier to backup and restore. Remember, not everyone who uses a computer knows what a command line is.

  15. Professional Data Recovery Services by davidwr · · Score: 1

    Most data recovery services can recover data from these devices, as long as the chip is intact and the data is still there.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  16. Be a good Windows user... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...and defragment your USB key periodically!

    1. Re:Be a good Windows user... by imsabbel · · Score: 1

      I seriously believe that the only reason linux people never feel the urge to defrag is the fact that their filesystem uses 250k files for a base system anyway, so even if files are fragmented, there is no performance difference between loading from 1000s of files or fragments, as the overhead isnt worse.

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    2. Re:Be a good Windows user... by sowth · · Score: 2, Informative

      Linux users don't need to defrag drives for the most part. The ext2 filesystem supports fragmentation prevention, so as long as you keep your drive less than about 95% full, you don't have to worry much about fragmented files. Any fragments will likely be huge, so they are not a problem.

    3. Re:Be a good Windows user... by PenGun · · Score: 1

      In general *nix filesytems don't fragment to any great extent. The advantage of a pro level server filesystem is large compared to M$'s standard whore friendly effort. Why fragmentation had to be imported to NTFS is still a mystery, they may not know any better.

          PenGun
        Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

  17. an emergency kit should contain by sepelester · · Score: 1

    The Ultimate Boot CD (a bit old now, is there a better alternative usable with a USB memory stick?)

    and

    a Linux Live CD

    1. Re:an emergency kit should contain by russ1337 · · Score: 1

      I'm with you on the Linux Live CD. I also find the alternate CD good also seeing as it has some extra features.

      (I suggested ubuntu to get rid of that zango thing in my last post and got a -1 troll for my problems. - LOL)

    2. Re:an emergency kit should contain by Joe+The+Dragon · · Score: 1

      UBCD for Windows http://www.ubcd4win.com/

    3. Re:an emergency kit should contain by Shawn+is+an+Asshole · · Score: 4, Informative

      There is an Ultimate BootCD for Windows which is based off of BartPE. I use it regularly and highly recommend it. It includes a good amount of tools and more can be added.

      I'd also recommend INSERT. It's a Linux LiveCD that includes ntfs-3g (full read/write support), gParted, the Linux-NTFS tools (ntfsclone and ntfsresize being the most useful to me), and others. It has a GUI (fluxbox is the manager).

      Recovery is Possible is also excellent and I use the PXE version heavily. My only complaint about it is that it doesn't have ntfs-3g yet. When I need that, or need to resize partitions (gParted) I use INSERT.

      --
      "It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
  18. barren family by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    My wife and I are having trouble conceiving. What program does Slashdot recommend?

    1. Re:barren family by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 1

      Wifeswapping - a trouble shared is a trouble halved

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
    2. Re:barren family by From+A+Far+Away+Land · · Score: 1

      Go with a USB
      -UnSubscribed Baby - one without parents yet.

      --
      Oh You POS
    3. Re:barren family by bogado · · Score: 1

      Sex usually helps...

      --
      []'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins

      ^[:wq

    4. Re:barren family by EM2(RET)Knight · · Score: 1

      Don't worry, Be Happy - Bobby McFarren(?) Recheck IO port. Make sure it's the right one.

  19. The same ones we've always been using... by toby34a · · Score: 1

    In my tech support days, we took walk-ins from all around campus with corrupted floppy drives. We always recommended that they switch over to flash drives to get rid of this constant problem. Then, a few weeks later, someone brought in a 1 GB corrupted flash drive... and we sat there for an hour as BadCopy Pro did its work. Norton Disk Doctor, BadCopy Pro work very well at file recovery from failed disks that say that they need to be reformatted before they are read. They're old tools, to be sure, but they still work on whoever has a floppy and they also work on flash drives. Sure, they can be slow (sometimes it took 10-15 min to recover a single floppy, an hour to recover said 1 GB flash drive) but they really do the trick and will be able to recover the files pretty well.

  20. Distrowatch by Almahtar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Distrowatch is a great place to find forensics/recovery distrobutions. When I have to recover a system (be it Windows, Mac, or Linux) I've found that pretty much any Linux liveCD or USB forensics distro will do the trick. From editing/fixing partitions to recovering data from a dead OS to fixing a botched install of an OS the tools are all there.

    1. Re:Distrowatch by Almahtar · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Oh and on a side note they're great for anonymous use of computers that normally require you to authenticate, provided you have physical access to them. Most network admins don't think of the possibility of bootable USB volumes and thus don't disable it in BIOS. On top of that, most BIOS manufacturers don't think people need an option for disabling booting from a USB disk and don't provide it. Don't have a valid account in this lab but need to check your e-mail? Plug in your USB disk, power down the computer, boot into your USB Linux install, check your mail, and reboot back to normal operation.

    2. Re:Distrowatch by wytcld · · Score: 1

      And most BIOS's will try to boot from the USB disk before trying to boot off whatever they've been explicitly set to? Why? Is this an intentional back door courtesy of the BIOS manufacturers? BIOS's don't just arbitrarily try to boot from everywhere, they have to be pointed to a particular device. So all/most of the USB-capabable BIOS's go to anything/everything connected by USB first, before the hard drives, before the CD/DVD, before the floppy? Weird.

      --
      "with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
    3. Re:Distrowatch by flithm · · Score: 1

      Most network admins don't think of the possibility of bootable USB volumes and thus don't disable it in BIOS. On top of that, most BIOS manufacturers don't think people need an option for disabling booting from a USB disk and don't provide it.

      I think it's a good idea to carry around a small bootable OS, but I'm not sure it's going to be as useful as you suggest. In fact, my personal experiences directly contradict what you're saying.

      ANY sysadmin, even a crappy one, will have thought of this. Every motherboard BIOS I've ever seen in the last few years (which is quite a few) has the option to disable this, or at least change the boot order thus effectively disabling the feature.

      Granted, there are likely going to be exceptions, which is why I would say, it can't hurt. Never know when you'll need a small bootable linux thumbdrive.

      If it were me I'd probably just load the drive up with a bunch of apps designed to run from a thumb drive like portable firefox and thunderbird.

    4. Re:Distrowatch by Almahtar · · Score: 1

      Oddly enough, a fair amount of BIOSes seem to do just that. The ZV6000 series laptops from HP don't even have an option in their boot order to boot from USB, but when I put in a USB disk that's bootable it favors it. Yes, it's a terrible idea on their part, but it still works sometimes.

  21. Intelligent stick by wile_e_wonka · · Score: 1

    I have an Intelligent Stick--mine's served me quite well and fits inside my wallet (I don't like things on my keychain).

    In case you look at it and think it isn't a USB drive--it is. You can get an adapter to make it look more like a normal USB drive, but then it doesn't fit in your wallet!

    1. Re:Intelligent stick by wile_e_wonka · · Score: 1

      I just realized, ummm--and yes, depending where I put it in my wallet, you can see the outline of the devise on the outside of my wallet.

      Some people have round outlines on their wallets . . . geeks have USB stick outlines on theirs. . . .

    2. Re:Intelligent stick by fm6 · · Score: 0
      (I don't like things on my keychain)
      So where do you put your keys?
    3. Re:Intelligent stick by pasamio · · Score: 1

      His pocket? I know thats where my car key lives.

      --
      I always wondered where this setting was...
  22. syslinux by Meeuw · · Score: 1

    My USB drive is filled with bootable images for syslinux, you can load kernels and boot floppy / harddisk images using memdisk. I partitioned my USB drive as a ZIP drive for improved BIOS booting. I currently have different Fedora kickstart options, a Fedora Rescue, Gentoo LiveUSB, memdisk86, Seagate Discwizard and Dell Diagnostics.

    1. Re:syslinux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got the same setup, but I've also included PC-Doctor for DOS on my drive since its found a lot of errors that aren't simple disk and memory problems.

    2. Re:syslinux by z_gringo · · Score: 1

      That is awesome. I would really like to get a decent linux bootable image on one and carry it around with me. One that could read NTFS partitions, and if possible one with that NT password recovery utility written on it. When I get some more free time, I will work on that.

      --
      -- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
  23. LNX-BBC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I haven't used it from a USB key myself but after some googeling it appears it is possible. The LNX-BBC kit at http://lnx-bbc.org/ has saved my bacon several times! Of course I started using it when people thought a business card CD was a good idea.....does that make me old? You young whipper snappers and your fancy USB keys!

  24. USB2 external harddisk - or internal by billstewart · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I guess there may be some older Macs that have USB1.x and Firewire, but most systems these days have USB2, and if you've got that, you might as well use it for external disks. For a USB flash stick, backing up to internal disk is probably fine, but for backing up the internal disks, there's a lot to be said for external drives on USB (or Firewire).
    • External disks have a separate power supply, so if you lose the internal drive because of bad power, the external is usually still safe.
    • External USB/FW drives have their own controllers, so if you lose the internal drives because your disk controller fried or your RAID controller scribbled the disks they're probably still safe, even if they're plugged in.
    • External drives are often unplugged, so if you lose the internal data because some software scribbled the disk or a user did something really stupid, the data's probably still there. You might even get lucky and dodge a virus attack, though that's harder, and USB drives are more likely to get plugged into different machines at different times, making it easier to propagate viruses.
    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  25. Card Readers. by twitter · · Score: 1

    System recovery from USB sounds good, but I've never used it. CDs are still cheaper and easier. I can see it being the way of the future, avoiding the CD writing stage, but most machines still work better with CDs. The recovery tools for me are still Knoppix and Debian images. Apart from the recent AMD intiramfs tools problem, I have not had a system fail in years. The real future is systems that simply don't fail and need to be "recovered." Outside of system recovery, I make lots of use of flash memory and can offer you feed back on two types of card readers.

    PC card style readers for laptops are very durable and inexpensive. A MMC reader can typically read six or so different kinds of flash cards. "Compact Flash" format readers are equally durable and even cheaper as the format fades away. All mount like any other media in Konqueror's "system:/media". Most better laptops will boot off of them.

    One of my music players has a SD slot in the back and I often use it as a usb card reader. It has lasted more than a year and works just fine. Some Windoze systems prompt me about "RaveMP", which is annoying but it works great in the normal software world as a simple USB fob.

    --

    Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

    1. Re:Card Readers. by trewornan · · Score: 1

      Fortunately I have been blessed with a mind of my own and do not require instruction on the content or manner of any statements I chose to make. If you wish to slavishly follow someone elses idea of what is appropriate in a discussion involving Linux that is entirely your perogative - I do not feel any such obligation.

  26. OnTrack.com by alchemist68 · · Score: 1

    http://www.ontrack.com/

    This company can recovery almost anything, for a price, I suppose it depends on how important your data is. For me, a year ago my LaCie 320 GB Big Disk Extreme striped RAID array failed (one drive burned-out). Normally, if the drive was one single hard drive, it would have cost a very affordable $700-$800, however, the striped RAID array required disassembling two drives, removing the platters, reading them inside a clean-room environment, splicing back together my data, and placing it on another LaCie 500 GB Big Disk Extreme for $3500.00! Of course, my thesis was on this drive and I wasn't going to graduate without it! So, as mentioned before, data recovery depends on how important your data is. If your life or future career is on the drive, then the price of data recovery may be money well spent.

    1. Re:OnTrack.com by lessthanjakejohn · · Score: 1

      and Raid 1,2,3,4,or 5 would have cost you much less!

    2. Re:OnTrack.com by sydsavage · · Score: 1

      Which is why RAID 0 (striped) is exactly wrong for this type of use. It's not like you need 90 MB/s to load your thesis. A document this important should be stored on either a RAID 1 (mirrored) or RAID 5 (parity) drive, besides being frequently backed up to something else like CD, DVD or tape.

      And it appears you didn't learn your lesson, replacing your drive with another striped set.

      Striped disk sets should be used when you actually need absolute speed, like working on large video/multimedia files, but even then, it should be archived on something less volatile when you're not actually working on it, since, as you now know, if one drive bites the dust, you lose.

    3. Re:OnTrack.com by alchemist68 · · Score: 1

      I didn't have a choice on to which drive the data was restored. OnTrack selected the drive, not me.

  27. easy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Trueimage is the best thing I have found for that.

    www.Acronis.com

  28. mm cheap backup by Brill · · Score: 1

    now if only compression got better, I could dump movies and jazz on to flash for cheaper than burning CDs/DVDs... backup software? uhmmm meh? who needs software when you can just backup your vital documents? besides my mac boots into single user (unix command-line) mode, that's 99% enough to tackle a problem.

  29. I am not the only one with a story like this: by hellasaltine · · Score: 1

    I put a working 80gig IDE drive into a $30 external enclosure and when Windows XP popped up the USB device install I was so psyched I nearly shit my pants.

    An hour later my PC freezes up (as is routine) with the USB drive still mounted.

    Upon reboot, the drive refuses to mount.

    Many hard disk data recovery tools recovered the files BUT I have yet to find anything that will mount and wipe the drive.

    As far as I know it is permanently corrupted. Which seems like it should be impossible but here I am with this piece of junk sitting on my desk silently laughing at me.

    1. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A lot of time , it is the cheap power supply in those enclosures that cause you problems. Try hooking the bare HD as internal HD using your PC power supply.

    2. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by CaptainDefragged · · Score: 1

      Have you looked in disk management? Often thost configurations don't assign a drive letter. If you can see the drive in DM then that is possibly all that is wrong.

      --
      Don't tailgate - the end is near!
    3. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by hellasaltine · · Score: 1

      I couldn't find it in Disk Management! Also, when I first went to check out the disk manager, it would hang for minutes unless I unplugged the USB drive. So what I've determined is: 1. It is readable. (As I can reliably recover files from it.) 2. It is somehow unmountable. I know the enclosure is good because I use another drive in it and it works perfectly. If I could just figure out how to mount the bad drive and zap away whatever is corrupting it.

    4. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "I have yet to find anything that will mount and wipe the drive."

      Have you tried using a linux distro like DSL? - http://damnsmalllinux.org/

      I have recovered many a corrupt virus ridden, spyware infested windows box using it.

    5. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by hellasaltine · · Score: 1

      The enclosure works well with other IDE drives. But I would like to stick this bad drive in a PC tower when I get the chance.

    6. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by _tognus · · Score: 2, Informative

      Nah, your data is fine. Windows is just really, really bad at external drives. I kick the power out of mine all the time, and this happens. Here's my fix. You can leave the drive plugged in.

      1. Do this registry edit to force viewing of hidden devices. Reboot.
      2. Open Device Manager.
      3. Select View > Show hidden devices.

      What you will have is a whole heap of devices that are faded (i.e. hidden) under the USB drop down (usually "USB Mass Storgae Device", and also under Disk drives (you should be able to recognise your drive).

      1. Remove all of these hidden devices, then eject the drive and remove the other few entries. Reboot.
      2. Log in. Plug your drive back in, and let it hardware detect. Check My Computer, and you should be OK!
    7. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by fwarren · · Score: 1

      Microsoft prodcuts are picky. Once upon a time, back in 2000, I had resized some partitions with a linux tool. After about the 3rd or 4th time I did this, Microsoft products would not recognize the drive or partition table.

      From a boot. floppy, MS DOS 3.x 4.x 5.x 6.x, Win95 and Win98 could not do it. Win 98 on the drive, could not do it. Would lock up tight as a drum about 3 seconds into booting it up.

      However Dr Dos, FreeDos and PC Dos could all boot just fine, even let you run fdisk. Microsoft fdisk would not work even after a boot from one of the working boot floppies.

      I would try accessing it from Linux or a system booted of of FreeDos or PC Dos. It may be worth the effort.

      --
      vi + /etc over regedit any day of the week.
    8. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by that+this+is+not+und · · Score: 1

      This might be redundant information that you already know, but you can buy 2.5" to 3.5" IDE adaptor boards. You plug the 2.5" laptop drive into it and then plug it in like it was any regular IDE drive. The adaptor board is all passive (two connectors on a small circuit board) and inexpensive.

      This will be useful to you, if you've thus far only been struggling to get the drive to be recognizable through your external enclosure.

    9. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by hellasaltine · · Score: 1

      While I delighted in scraping away 20-something unused drivers, my problem remains. I found out that Windows thinks there are Bad Blocks on my drive. I would be surprised if that were the case, since I've hardly used this drive ever. Which sucks as I've had it at least long enough for the warranty/RMA to be invalid. Any more suggestions? I would give anything to turn this into a working drive.

    10. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try asking your local Linux User Group. Maybe they can help you.

    11. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by _tognus · · Score: 1

      Hmm, that's unusual. When you plug in after cleaning out the old devices, what happens? In my case, the partitions come back and function as per normal.

      Does the device appear in Disk Management at all? Could be you need to try formatting again.
      Try it on another machine that has never had that drive plugged in, see what happens.

      Failing that, run manufacturer's diagnostic tools on it (might need to drop it into a tower) if you haven't already. If that comes back OK, try installing an OS on it. Sounds weird, but BeOS resurrected a "dead" drive for me. :)

      See how you go.

      _tog

    12. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by jim_deane · · Score: 2, Informative

      Try removing the drive from the USB enclosure, installing it as the sole drive in a computer, and running DBAN.

      I had to do that to a laptop drive that just wouldn't recognize in a USB enclosure. Once wiped and formatted, I reinstalled it into the USB enclosure, and it has worked fine ever since.

      No good idea why (either the failure or the recovery!).

    13. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by hellasaltine · · Score: 1

      I would love to do that, any pointers?

    14. Re:I am not the only one with a story like this: by hellasaltine · · Score: 1

      After I cleaned out the old hardware, I plugged the bad drive back in. The standard bubble pop-ups of "New USB Device", "Disk Drive", etc popped up in succession, ending with "Your new hardware is installed and ready to use" or whatever the smug lying text is. Opening My Computer, I find no new logical drive. Opening the Disk Management I find no new physical drive.

      Upon opening Testdisk I see the device as "dev\sdb" and the capacity is right but the geometry is wrong according to the manufacturer website. And it finds an old partition on the "wrong" geometry.

  30. Acronis True Image by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A program I have been using to back up the main Win partition(also it can backup ext2 and 3, and has a linux client/server!) is acronis true image. After trying to use that garbage, Norton Ghost, I went looking for alternative imaging solutions and found that. Its pretty tight, it can compress images and restore over the network. Although, it "cost" me $999(Well it costs 999 for the Enterprise version...) but I got it "legitimately" cuz its so worth it... Anyways this program is 10x better than the recent versions of Ghost, and doesn't run a million and one processes on your computer, and the couple of processes it does run are pretty light in resource consumption.

  31. Checksums by glas_gow · · Score: 1

    md5deep values of /bin /sbin etc. helps me sleep at night, provided I remember to check they match from time to time. As for keeping the binaries on the thumb drive itself, why bother, there are plenty of live-distros that cover just about everything you need for recovery, and even if they don't, it's trivial enough to make one that has exactly what you need.

  32. My drive died last week - Here's what I learned by user24 · · Score: 1

    (FYI, I run windows)

    normally, I use "restoration"; it's a great application to recover deleted files. It supports all MS operating systems and all MS filesystems, it's small, free and required no installation so you can run it from a floppy, which is nice. I never had any problems with it on various HDDs, USBs, SD cards and XD cards - until:
    My USB thumbdrive generated the following error in windows "The drive is not formatted" - oh bugger. But after trying many different applications (and buggering the drive further in the process - it ended up not even recognising that there wa drive there at all), I found PC Inspector File Recovery, which did manage to recover all my files. I still stick with Restoration for most of my needs - it's a cleaner looking app, but if/when it fails, I look to PCiFR.
    The reason I don't use PCiFR all the time? As I said, I don't like the interface, you have to install it (and if you install something on the drive that you need to recover data from, you run the risk of overwriting the data) and Restoration is small. They're both free.

    Restoration: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html
    PCiFR: http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome .htm

  33. FAT is not Phat by fm6 · · Score: 1
    Of course, using the FAT filing system means that most file attributes from other filesystems will get lost when a file is copied there.

    That's kind of beside the point, since you don't want to do a by-file copy: you're wasting a little space by allocating trailing blocks and a lot of space by not using compression. You have to use an archiver anyway, and it isn't hard to find one that will preserve all the file attributes you care about.

    What's really painful about FAT is that no one file can be more than 2 GB. So if you anticipate creating an archive that's bigger than that (after compression), you need to use an archiver that knows how to do multivolume archives

    1. Re:FAT is not Phat by iangoldby · · Score: 1
      That's kind of beside the point, since you don't want to do a by-file copy

      I think you missed my point. I was talking about filesystem formats - the fact that most thumb drives come preformatted with FAT32 (or FAT16), which is the real reason they are cross-platform.

      (Yes, of course you'd use an archiver for making archives, but I wasn't talking about that.)
  34. Firewire drives (equal time dept.) by solitas · · Score: 2, Informative

    For Mac users (whose machines can boot from firewire devices) I can recommend the http://www.kanguru.com/fireflash.html.

    My 4gig unit is tough as a brick: hasn't failed me once (i.e. dataloss) and it has helped resurrect machines several times.

    (somewhere, sometime, I'd read that that Firewire (400) is faster than USB2 (480) because there's less 'overhead' in the data packets. can anyone verify this?)

    --
    "It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
    1. Re:Firewire drives (equal time dept.) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      USB is harder on the CPU than Firewire, so sometimes people will claim that Firewire is actually faster.

      Unless you have both ports (many PCs do these days) or are super-sensitive to such things, you probably will not notice any major difference.

    2. Re:Firewire drives (equal time dept.) by PenGun · · Score: 1

      This is largly true but firewire is a stateless hardware connection and USB is client-server. Essential sustained high bandwith apps should prolly try for firewire.

          PenGun
        Do What Now ??? ... Standards and Practices !

    3. Re:Firewire drives (equal time dept.) by pasamio · · Score: 1

      I agree, USB is better for random access than Firewire which IIRC is based on the SCSI standard (or designed to replace it) and more aimed at bulk data transfer. Plus I think you can daisy chain Firewire and not USB.

      --
      I always wondered where this setting was...
  35. "Easy to use" is really not easy at all. by sowth · · Score: 1

    message popped up saying "This drive needs to be reformatted." She clicked yes, and BAM, all of her un-backed-up files were gone.

    What programmer in his right mind would do this? It does not really make things much easier to use, and often causes accidental data loss such as this. I've even seen similar issues on Linux installs--Ubuntu has a warning sticker about the default being to wipe out the hard drive. A friend accedently wiped out his second hard drive with a red hat install and his network drivers were on the second drive, no floppy, he had to go out and buy a cd burner (they weren't the cheap things they are today). I suppose it gave him an excuse to his wife for buying new hardware. ;-)

    Just seems like another stupid thing people have been brainwashed into thinking it is "easy" to use, but in reality it is not.

    1. Re:"Easy to use" is really not easy at all. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was thinking about this (I'm the original poster.) I imagine that, in the case of someone purchasing a drive that needs to be formatted first, it would be easier to have a dialog come up and say "Format?" But, now-a-days, how often do you buy a harddrive that doesn't have a setup utility or specific instructions on how to setup the drive? Those that don't need the instructions probably already know how to format a drive anyway. Having the default behavior for an unreadable drive be format just seems like shortsidedness.

  36. card mini adapters..... by Phantom_24 · · Score: 1

    I have the I/O Data Mini SD USB adapter I picked up for $10 from CompUSA for my phone, and the thing is flawless every time. Also giving me the ability, as I upgrade my cards, to use the old ones as flash drives...

  37. repair flash drives the easy and reliable way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    dd if=/dev/sdx of=flash.img
    cp flash.img tmpfile.img
    bvi tmpfile.img (repairs made)
    dd if=tmpfile.img of=/dev/sdx (new flashcard)

  38. Spinrite for $89 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Spinrite for $89 is a lot cheaper - and you should always backup important data or just use any other RAID level then zero. Masters thesis? Yet you didn't know to have a backup copy?

    Leave school ASAP and learn some common sense in the real world.

    1. Re:Spinrite for $89 by anilg · · Score: 1

      If spinrite is by that guy from grc.com then I have to warn you first. Goto grcsucks.com for some interesting info..

      --
      http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
    2. Re:Spinrite for $89 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SpinRite is not the solution. Read this straightforward debunking of SpinRite before you purchase it: http://www.radsoft.net/news/roundups/grc/20060123, 00.shtml

  39. The Future is Now by SpaceLifeForm · · Score: 1
    The real future is systems that simply don't fail and need to be "recovered."

    It's the Microsoft machines that have 99% of the problems.

    And most of the tools that have been mentioned here are for 'fixing' Windows machines.

    Kick the Microsoft addiction, the withdrawal is worth it.

    --
    You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
  40. Hiren's BootCD by aliquis · · Score: 1

    I really doubt the legality of this one but Hiren's BootCD must be one of the most complete solutions. SVP also sells real cheap microSD-adapters which can probably make a nice small drive, but microSD-cards are much more expensive than miniSD and SD so maybe it's a bad idea.

    1. Re:Hiren's BootCD by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 1

      That bootcd looks really nice, but for the life of me I can't find a download link.. Am I overlooking something?

      --
      Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    2. Re:Hiren's BootCD by LunaticTippy · · Score: 1

      Just in case you're not joking, it is customary to find a torrent/emule/warez server.

      --
      Man, you really need that seminar!
  41. PortableApps Project by ganjagadget · · Score: 1

    I carry the full PortableApps suite http://www.portableapps.com/ (89.5MB) on one of my Transcend my 2GB SD card that I swap between my camera, Treo 650 & a Rosewill SD/MMC USB 2.0 pocket card reader ($5 at http://www.newegg.com/. here is a list of some of the apps included:
    7-Zip Portable
    AbiWord Portable
    Audacity Portable
    ClamWin Portable
    FileZilla Portable
    Firefox Portable
    Gaim Portable
    GIMP Portable
    Miranda IM Portable
    Nvu Portable
    OpenOffice.org Portable
    Sudoku Portable
    Sunbird Portable
    Thunderbird Portable
    VLC Media Player Portable
    Plus more

  42. TestDesk-reading the sighs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Think about that for a second: if you didn't have a tech guy in the family, and you were an average teacher, what would you have done if you dropped your laptop off at, say, a best buy, to install Office only to return to find EVERYTHING you had on the laptop lost."

    I would have read the sign they have that says they're not responsible for the data on your hard drives. Most repair shops have such a policy, although most will try to not damage anything.

    1. Re:TestDesk-reading the sighs. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're kidding, right? Tell someone to install Office, and have the computer returned sans all customization and files?

      This wouldn't be acceptable at even an entry level computer repair shop, let alone a place of buisness where many job-critical documents may be installed on any given computer.

  43. Weird links by RalphTheWonderLlama · · Score: 1

    Why does the link under "system recovery" go to a USB flash drive wikipedia article? The strange links in the blurbs often annoy me. Ok I see it has a couple references to recovery but maybe a recovery article of some type would have made more sense.

    Here's a data recovery company I know:
    http://www.essdatarecovery.com/

    --
    simple, fast homepage with your links: http://www.ngumbi.com/
  44. Mod Parent down. by Asm-Coder · · Score: 1

    Ok, he expressed his opinion. Don't shoot him for it. He even backed it up with some facts and examples that most everyone should understand. I do believe you need to read your own post before posting. You violated:

    Point one: Name calling
    Point three: Thoughtful. Anyone can quote.
    Point four: Name calling again. Although you can redeem yourself.

    The rest is just for Linux. However, YOU need to learn to be polite, read, and form your own thoughts.
    (Moderators, mod me down if you choose, but if you do, mod down the parent as well. It's posts like this that make me wonder where /. is going.)

  45. Trinity Rescue Kit by maddog42 · · Score: 1

    This is a great all-in-one recovery kit on a single CD that also supports being loaded on a USB pen drive. The ISO image clocks in at around ~150Mb, is a pretty complete linux (based on Mandrake) with built-in sshd, smb support, partimage, and a good double-handful of useful recovery tools. It's designed for cross-platform support - the full suite of ntfs-tools are included as well. I have been using it to clone baseline builds of my production systems at work and it is excellent. Fast boot and a good selection of boot options as well. Can be had at http://trinityhome.org/. Check out the latest beta for even more functionality.

  46. Lame article, but some hints nonetheless by owlstead · · Score: 1

    First of all, don't forget that the inexpensive USB-flash cards that are sold are mostly 6 MB read / 3MB write devices, while the more expensive ones are about 25/20 MB respectively. If you want to fill 1/2 GB on a regular basis, I would opt for the faster one (the so called 100X-150X speeds).

    The quality of the card readers does not make any difference, it's the flash that stores the backup. The readers can be bought anywhere for about 10 dollars, so what's the problem?

    As said, USB-drives are just another backup medium. Since they are random read/write, I would use any backup application that can handle removable disks. I would not care too much about the limited number of writes, since it is very unlikely that this would matter if you back up only dayly or weekly.

  47. Programs on my drive by Llynix · · Score: 1

    I've read most of the comments and I was surprised that I didn't see his main question answered. I don't think he's saying what would you use to recover them, but rather what you use to recover other systems with them.

    Personally, I have:
    a copy of firefox installer
    putty (et al)
    wget
    portable firefox
    process explorer
    hijack this

    I'll admit it's not very well rounded but I've only worked on a few computers and that's what I needed.

  48. Acronis TrueImage - Windows + Linux ext3 by cheros · · Score: 1

    I use a USB drive and Acronis True Image. It gives me a number of options which I like:

    (1) scale: I can back up files, partitions and complete harddisks, even though half of it is Linux (limited to ext3 support, though).
    (2) versioning: I can go back to previous versions of files
    (3) multi-layer backup: you can also back up to a separate partition, but I didn't do that (not enough space :-) - I always do a full backup to the USB drive.
    (3) recovery CD: it can toast a boot CD for you which allows you to boot up with a zapped harddisk and rebuild from scratch. This is also the way to move data from one system to another as the partitioner is flexible.

    Works for me, but be aware that a USB drive is slooooow - even on USB 2. Maybe a Firewire disk is faster...

    --
    Insert .sig here. Send no money now. Owner may sue, contents will settle. Batteries not included.
  49. Tools needed on thumb-drives ... NONE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We do not need 'tools' on 'thumb-drives. What tools are there, especially the 'U3' ones, are actually tools for spying by unknown entities somewhere on the internet. I bought one of these 'devices' and it came 'preloaded' with 'useful utilities' for 'WinXP' and all other flavors of windows except Win98 which evidently was sold with no permanent malware istalled outside of secret federal government viruses (later used to ground Sadaam's air force in 1991). Chief among these was 'U3', the company(??!) that 'made' it. If inserted into any hacked windows (above win98) computer, it instantly installed itself without asking permission! I have no knowledge if it would 'ask' anything at all and do not want to find out, so now I am lighter by twenty dollars for this. I looked at the thing in Linux, and it has viles (files) on it that cannot be removed even by linux. That says that those files are on a prom that is memory mapped into the memory space of the memory chips comprising the main memory of the device. Evidently those files have some way of being changed, as there is a routing in the malware that installs itself in windows that continually seeks out the internet for possible 'updates'. So there you have it. Do not plug these things into a windows machine or you will get hacked or botted. I can only use the thing for linux, as they cannot do anything with linux machines.....yet! I have all my windoww machines isolated from the internet so no matter what somebody does with them, they cannot spread it.

  50. Ubuntu Live USB has it all! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Personally, I find the Ubuntu Live USB has just about everything you need, and anything you don't have can just be added because it works in "persistent" mode. In this mode, any additional utilities you install, settings, etc. stay on the USB stick.

    I got mine pre-installed from these guys. Works great, and it has GParted Live included on it too, which I've used successfully loads of times for resizing Windows partitions (including NTFS).

  51. Cowon iaudio by Bohemoth2 · · Score: 1

    Keep in mind that that most of the Cowon gear
    mounts as mass storage too(mine is an iAudio U3).
    And it supports open compression standards such as Vorbis and Flacc.

  52. Ob. Fortune by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    gawk; talk; date; grep; touch; unzip; strip; touch; gasp; finger; gasp; mount; fsck; more; yes; fsck; gasp; eject; umount; make clean; make mrproper; sleep

    Or maybe just "spawn".

  53. Creative Muvo MP3 player with Acronis T.I., et al by SpzToid · · Score: 1

    My Creative MuVo TX SE 1Gb once was once able to boot-up in BartPE (UBCD4win), running a full compliment of virus scanners, disk recovery solutions (GetDataBack). You could also just stick in the USB to an XP system, and have access to installed apps that way too.

    Only I got too cocky building it up, and then one day it wouldn't boot up anymore. Damn, I miss having it running 100%.

    But it is still very useful even if it doesn't boot-up le machine; plus it plays MP3s nicely, so I'm likely to have it with me as I cycle around town, and use public transportation.

    BartPE on such an MP3 player is a laptop and OS all unto itself. What a beautiful ~$50 mobile disaster-recovery workstation!

    If anyone knows a trick for reliably getting such an MP3 plyer-type device to boot-up, please clue me in! (Storage is trivial, boot-ing up, with Dual OS loaders is where it's at.

    - - - -

    You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.

    --
    You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
  54. $10 Microcenter flash drives by jmenezes · · Score: 1

    I made the mistake of buying some last time I was in Cambridge, Ma visiting my parents.
    They are great sticks, USB 2.0 compatible*, and overall great if you dont mind the fact that they only work at 11mbps.

    I contacted the manufacturer, which promptly responded that they would look into it, and never heard back.

    In other words, dont waste your money if your time is valuable.

    --
    Stop over-analyzing your analizations