Discussion on:

10 Linux rescue tools for recovering Linux, Windows, or Mac machines

I've had success using Parted Magic, which contains a host of tools for working with hard drives. Another one that is good for copying drives and partitions is Clonezilla.

PC RegEdit is a neat little live CD that (as the name implies) is used to edit a Windows Registry on an unbootable system where the LNGC option is not enough. Of course you need to know what specific registry key you need to alter/remove but it works like a champ when you need it.

i would like to add kaspersky rescue disk.

Clonezilla?
When your drive starts showing early signs of Deteriating

We also use SpinRite 6.0 for HDD recovery and tune ups.

I would love to read an article about Linux rescue mode. A brief tutorial with screen shots would make a fine addition to the TR library.

my most commonly used Linux rescue tool is Puppy ver. 4.1.2 - loads from CD completely into RAM and great for rescuing photos and other important files off of an infected Windows machine before performing the only truly reliable eradication method, reformatting the drive and clean OS install!

I use Puppy also. But sometimes GParted will not delete locked partitions. What do you do then?

My favoruites are EBCD and Hiren's boot CD. I use them very often and I am very satisfied with them. I rarely use Austrumi. Hiren's is the best one with Partition, Backup, Recovery, Testing, RAM memory, HDD, System information, MBR, BIOS, Multimedia, Password, NTFS, File managers, Network, Registry, etc. tools and Mini XP. Try them!

Testdisk is a handy data recovery tool that I have often used to bring back photos destroyed by the stupid FAT32 file system on camera memory cards.

As has been said; Clonezilla; simply awesome at pro-actively creating a restore image before windows turns everything to custard again.

Ubuntu Live CD and a Samba server with space...if it's going to be an easier task, boot to ubuntu, send the user's data across the network to your samba server, and then format using gparted before reloading windows. Also on the samba server keep a folder of commonly needed windows software to make the setup process that much quicker; eg openoffice with jre, firefox, tbird, malwarebytes, an antivirus (I use comodo or avira).

I'm surprised you didn't likst Avira's Antivir Rescue System CD!

Its linux bootable cd .. you can download the ISO or cd wizard versions which are updated daily..

Once booted, you'll need to switch to English by clicking the British Flag (defaults to German) then set config operations to rename (or delete) virus infected files, otherwise it only scans and tells you you're infected ... like duh, you'd probably not be running such a tool if you weren't already infected.

Avira AntiVir Rescue System
http://www.avira.com/en/support/support_downloads.html

Windows and Linux viruses are different. If this Live CD is intended for use on a Linux partition, then it will be of limited use on a Windows one. Do you if it uses windows-based definitions and heuristics?

Sure be handy if it did.

-NT

It requires very little memory.
The CD can be removed (after loading), freeing up the CD drive, for burning, etc.
It can see all your drives, and USB drives.
It can retain settings, data etc. This is soooo easy to do, and can be retained to hard drive, USB thumb drive, and possibly to a CD/DVD (haven't checked that out).
I have only dabbled, with Linux systems, but I like Puppy's as much as any of them.

It has that annoying, Apple like, habit of showing separate windows for each drive, instead of a decent file Manager, apart from that it is terrific.

We just ran into a situation where the root password for a Linux server was unknown and the first thing we did was download knoppix. It helped us gain access to the server and complete our job. Then today I read this article. When it's right, it's right.

... Ultimate Boot CD?

You can run windows Anti-Virus & Anti-Spyware off a CD or USB drive. It lets you remotely mount the registry which really help in malware removal.
I also like OPHCrack for users that forgot there password or terminated employees that you don't know their passwords.

So I've rebuilt my mother-in-law's machine, (Vista) and have all S/W installed, updates, etc. Any suggestions for a good backup utility I could run that would be similar to Ghosting the PC? I know in a month she'll have installed more malware and will need it recovered, and I'd like to ghost it in a good state this time.

If you have any seagate or maxtor drive in the system or attached, Seagate FREE diskwizard is a slightly restricted version of Acronis. It works very well.

I've not had to replace a corrupt HDD in 5+ years with using DiskWizard/AcronisLite. It is the best PM tool imho, to have a real bootable OS/programs backup. In my systems, I will configure programs to make my work easier. When I like how the configuration is working, I format a target drive then clone. As OEM OS have smaller drives, I attach and do updates to see if there are any problems with my expensive programs. The tools posted here have their place for helping when a Window problem happens, but to just boot to a backup drive then reclone is just faster than searching and copying files. My main editor has 3 boot drives, with only one drive able to connect to the web. Downtime is only a matter of softboot, not spending time$$ trying to fix a problem. Also, the SATA300 disk is backward compatible to ALL seagate drives. POV... fwiw Norton Gohst does not do this same clone. You have to leave the main drive connected to boot to it's supposed clone.

Download Seagate's DiscWizard, and burn to CD.
Get an external Docking thingy ($30 Aust).
Get an Internal 3.5 inch 500GB Seagate SATA drive ($55 Aust).
Shove it vertically into the Docking thingy.
Connect it, via USB cable to your PC.
Set your PC bios to boot from CD.
Boot up with the DiscWizard CD.
Backup your Drive to the External Drive.
Yell out if you need further clarification.

PS I use it all the time (as described above).

I must have missed a step, but when I tested USB OS/programs backup, the USB was in use and I failed at being able to boot from USB selected in BIOS or F11.

Any thoughts?

Thanks

Hi,
Your post was shown as a reply to my docking thingy post.
Was your question in response to my post ?

If so, I don't use my external docking thingy for booting, in the scenario I was describing.
When ever I need to restore one of my backup images, I just boot into the DiscWizard CD, and tell it to replace the partition (or whole drive).

The Western Digital site has a WD-drive-specific version of Acronis.

Yep, WD does a full clone not a gohst. I have a system with WD and SeaGate drives, I clone to and from with no issues.

It is all a matter of what you want to spend time on. As most use My Documents as designed, all work is stored there, I copy a corrupt MyDocs to my source drive before I clone, then redirect the files when a program is searching for the data.

This is the free tool I use. It can create and copy partitions on the same drive or between drives. You can get a bootable iso or you can install it on a working system.

Another good one is Easeus partition master home edition. Both are free (not trialware) and available on cnet and other popular sites.

It runs in windows and does a superb job. I've used it several times now. The first time to save my own server! Make a clone to a spare HD, disconnect HD, continue to back up important data to external location. When original HD crashed, swap with clone, import data, VOILA!

Go figure, a little NoWhereNewMexKilo town has 2 members posting! LOL Boomer, post private, KiloVideo at gmail. Is this Ray?

After the system is "SET" run Acronis and set up the hidden partion backup process. This will allow a restore to the original state by pressing F11 at boot time. Put "my documents" in a separate partion so data is not lost.

Macrium Reflect...is great. Only problem I had was imaging to DVD's did not work.....but imaging to an external drive works perfectly. Go to CNET for dowmloads.

There is also an AVG Rescue CD at http://www.avg.com/ww-en/avg-rescue-cd I've already used it once and worked perfectly to remove viruses

I once had to fix a Windows machine that had a registry entry deleted - I found a pretty decent Linux distro that helped me out, RIP (Rescue Is Possible) - it has a large selection of tools for doing everything from editing your registry to backing up a corrupted drive. It comes in a Linux live cd.

I am apalled that SpinRite isn't on this list (www.grc.com). That program is OS-agnostic and performs low-level driver recovery and has performed amazing saves.

Has anyone tried the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD)? I have used it for years and has saved me many times. It has CPU & mem tests, HDD diagnostics for various brands, partition editors, etc. (http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/).

The only tools I have used that was mentioned in the post is Knoppix and TestDisk which one of the users mentioned. I would say most of these are not needed unless you do not have the proper tools. I would add Avast Antivirus to the list. It is the a great Antivirus that is free. It is not Linux but it has a boot scan that will scan your hard drive before it boots into Windows to remove viruses. This is just as good as slaving the drive and running a scan. If the OS is corrupt I can most of the time fix it or if I jsut need to get data off I slave it using a IDE/SATA to USB cable that costs less than $20 most places. That is a tool everyone should have. And if Windows cannot read the data than I will try Knoppix. Only had to do that maybe twice. I had used TestDisk once and it worked but everything else in my opinion is not needed if you know what your doing.

Don't have time to read everyones comments, but did anyone suggest or mention puppy linux for data recovery? Works great by installing into RAM so it leaves the optical drive free. Puppy Linux 4.3.1.

Also, AVG came out with a free ISO download that lets you scan for viruses and other miscellaneous tasks. Based on Linux of course... but more of a BIOS type of GUI. Hope someone finds this useful.

That's my two cents!

Hi Jack,
thx, that sounds nice, - but: What do you use to recover when you accidentally began to format a Linux drive and stopp your mistake within 30 sec., when format had already began (Opensuse 10.3).
Mac

No AV tools, but its the best hard drive and recovery tool I've used.

www.grc.com/

I have used Gparted the recently in the past 2 yesars and on several serves to resize those pesky small dell Windoes O/S partitions and it worked great and would highly recommend- Used it on very big partitions - 750 G and up and worked like a champ - It just took some time due to the resizing of large amounts of data/space but very awesome and can be run from a iso cd/dvd or memory stick

Jack good article, since the article was published i just read a couple a days ago, and guess what?, the laptop (sony vaio VGN-TZ35FN/B) of the president of the company where i worked, crashed the OS (windows Vista)and the hard disk doesn't wake up to get the information. The IT team was afraid and they were running looking a company like a forensic technology for extract the information. then i read the article and i proposed to use Trinity Rescue Kit, i downloaded immediately and burned the ISO.
The result was incredible i could extract the information, so i expected to receive at the less gratitude, but it wasn't. so it doesn't matter, the really important is the knowledge.

Puppy linux beats the crap out of knoppix, if for no other reason, by booting faster due to lower system overhead. Check it out. I love it and use it daily.

I downloaded the latest Knoppix DVD iso, and burned to a DVD.
I am pretty sure the burn was ok (and verified).
When I then boot from the DVD, it gives the normal white writing on my CRT monitor, and a female voice says something. Not long after, the DVD makes reading noises, then rests.
During that latter period my CRT goes blank, and the monitors status light goes yellow instead of green.
That usually means that the monitor thinks nothing is sending it a signal.
I am pretty sure Knoppix has loaded ok, but it aint sending anything to my monitor.
I suspect that Knoppix cannot handle my KVM link.
I have single monitor connected to two PC's via a KVM.

I have done similar in the past to create a Puppy Linux LiveCD, and it runs fine, in that same PC.
Seagate DiscWizard runs fine from a bootable CD.
Paragon Partition Magic, runs fine from a bootable CD.

Anyone got any thoughts ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recovery_Is_Possible

Great tool that I have installed as a network boot option. It includes parted, dd_rescue, fdisk and many others. It has some issues when trying to detect network cards so I'm using Ubuntu's tools.

dd is a tool that copies a device to another - I use it instead of the miriad of for sale drive and partition cloning software. dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb

BootMed is a great live cd that comes with TestDisk, PhotoRec, ddrescue, virus checkers and other recovery tools. The best part is that it also comes with tutorials that guide the average computer user through using the tools.
http://www.bootmed.com

Somebody mentioned XX Clone. It works well, but it is very S--L--O--W. Easeus ToDo Backup and probably others are much faster.

should we also mention "Offline NT Password & Registry Editor" live cd

Hi I had a Sony Vaio laptop which I had installed Windows and Ubuntu, the laptop was stolen (end of Feb 2012), and now I may have found it back (end of July 2012), but it has been stripped of the parts including (possibly) the hard drive, when it was stolen I lost 8 years of photos which I stupidly didn't back up, my question is, is there any way to recover the photos, I read that Linux doesn't need a hard drive to run, can this somehow mean it can be accessed from the computer to recover my photos? Please don't be offended by my lack of knowledge of computers and operating systems, I am seeking your much more advanced knowledge in regards tho my problem. Thanks very much.