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Deven Kampenhout's Tech Blog

Experiences of a Web Infrastructure Architect in the Hosting Industry
Knoppix to the Rescue!
I found a fun article called "True Stories of Knoppix Rescues". My first experience with Knoppix was when a co-worker of mine pulled a business-card sized CD out of his wallet during a server emergency. It sure does come in handy to carry around one in your wallet, especially if you're running systems on the Internet with data you want to keep. The cool thing is that the bootable utility OS and tools can fit within 100 MB. The filesystem recovery tools have proven invaluable, especially when you wipe out your boot loader. I wonder if there are any similar bootable filesystem tools that can be used on Windows. I know there are the standard install CD's which have some rescue utilities, but it would be cool to have a wallet-sized version. It probably exists somewhere already, but I'll have to keep my eyes out for it.
Posted: Monday, January 10, 2005 5:46 PM by devenkamp

Comments

Puri said:

Try this link:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

# January 10, 2005 6:05 PM

Jamie Cansdale said:

For a bootable CD that can read NTFS file systems you can use BartPE. This utility lets you build a bootable CD from an XP or Windows 2003 CD. It comes with various modules for including different utilities.
# January 10, 2005 6:07 PM

David Brabant said:

Have a look at this:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/index.php
# January 10, 2005 6:24 PM

Jorgie said:


You can do it with Windows PE (everthing you need is on your XP CD...)

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Jorgie
# January 10, 2005 7:38 PM

Deven Kampenhout said:

You guys rock! Thanks for the tip!
# January 10, 2005 9:21 PM

chrishillman said:

Not to troll, but I have to laugh that one post ago you were throwing anti-Linux FUD, now you are praising Linux?

That is an over simplification of your post on how much enterprise support for Linux actually costs, sorry for jumping to a simple conclusion on the article (but it's for the sake of a chuckle).

I might also state that I have had trouble getting write access to NTFS with Knoppix, but I think that is due to the experimental nature of the NTFS driver and the fact that it might scramble the NTFS volume so it starts with just read-only permission by default...

I liked ERD Commander Pro myself (for reliable system recovery).
# January 11, 2005 7:51 AM

Tito Leverette said:

ERD commander http://www.winternals.com. Great tool for accessing the filesytem, repairing the boot partition, registry keys, removing installing drivers. Has a gui interface just as if though you were booted to windows. Can set passwords, access network drives, and so much more.
# January 11, 2005 8:39 PM
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