USB Drives — Recovery?

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)."

Comments

WinPE

[Utopia]

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

How about...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

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

tar

[rehabdoll]

tar.

Re:tar

[DittoBox]

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

Re:tar

[jamesborr]

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.

System recovery?

[trmj]

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.

photorec

[porksoda]

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.

TestDesk

[Yaksha42]

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.

Re:TestDesk

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:TestDesk

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Bootable Flash Drive with Debian installed.

[lky]

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.

Recovery is for idiots that forgot backups

[javanree]

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.

ubcd

[Meltir]

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.

For windows

[earnest murderer]

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.

Re:an emergency kit should contain

[Shawn is an Asshole]

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.

Re:the same ones you used before...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Thumb Drive

[thc69]

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.

Firewire drives (equal time dept.)

[solitas]

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?)

Re:I am not the only one with a story like this:

[_tognus]

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!

Re:Be a good Windows user...

[sowth]

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.

Re:I am not the only one with a story like this:

[jim_deane]

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!).

Re:the same ones you used before...

[Lord Ender]

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.