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| Thread ID: 127358 | 2012-10-18 23:37:00 | Bootable USB drive with disk utilities | Tbird650 (6754) | Press F1 |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1307553 | 2012-10-18 23:37:00 | Hi all I'm currently looking at the prospect of making a bootable USB with utilities on it so I can repair laptops that don't have a CD/DVD drive. So I want to ask is there any favourite? User friendly, powerful, easy, etc? Also does the installation on a USB require all files on the USB drive to be erased? Logically, I believe I should be able to install an .iso image in the root directory and boot from that. Right now I have an Apacer 16GB USB and a small eMachines notebook that requires repair. Thanks |
Tbird650 (6754) | ||
| 1307554 | 2012-10-18 23:44:00 | Most may only work / boot if its formatted in FAT32 as well. I doubt you'll be able to boot from an ISO. There are ISO's / USB installs around, that you can put on a USB flash drive Altho, not all computers support booting from a USB flash drive either. Only thing I've chucked on a USB flash drive, is NT password reset. In case someone forgets their windows password. And copied a few files across. |
Speedy Gonzales (78) | ||
| 1307555 | 2012-10-18 23:59:00 | Speedy, thanks. The USB is FAT32 The notebook has USB as a boot priority option. It's the first time I've been presented with the prospect of having to boot from a USB, so am puzzling through the mountain of information on Google. This site: www.pendrivelinux.com looks quite promising, however there's dozens of possible linux variations and I'm supposed to chose a 'live Linux distribution'. They're not marked live as such, so my 1st thought is to use the .iso in their screenshot. |
Tbird650 (6754) | ||
| 1307556 | 2012-10-19 00:42:00 | most major linux distros have a live option, such as ubuntu, mint, maybe fedora and knoppix and so on. They're usually very good like that. You can also try this one called Active @ boot disk, that one worked pretty well for me. Though taking an image of a harddrive resulted in files on an external that took a format of it to remove -_- LiLi linux live usb creator is a definitely useful tool for creating bootable thumb sticks, it even manages to handle windows distributions for installing windows via usb. very cool. |
8ftmetalhaed (14526) | ||
| 1307557 | 2012-10-19 02:39:00 | Just use your favourite bootable utility CD and turn it into a USB drive with something like Flashboot www.prime-expert.com Flashboot isn't free but there's probably other programs for free that can put bootable CDs on USB drives. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1307558 | 2012-10-19 02:41:00 | Ok, thanks. I got Ubuntu 12.04 onto my USB. It booted OK however I'm unable to find any scandisk type tools. Smart reports disk OK/18 bad sectors. Temp is 29C. The notebook has XP and will eventually bsod at boot. |
Tbird650 (6754) | ||
| 1307559 | 2012-10-19 02:54:00 | If the disk has 18 bad sectors it could be that some data was lost which is causing the BSOD. The BSOD error code would be more useful than anything else at this point. The Linux equivalent of Scandisk\Chkdsk is a command-line utility called "fsck" - I don't know how good it is with Windows filesystems though. In any case, if the disk is getting bad sectors it will likely just keep getting worse, you should replace the disk. If you want to run CHKDSK, boot into recovery console from an XP installation CD and run it there. Of course, if the drive is failing, running CHKDSK could cause even more data loss. |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1307560 | 2012-10-19 03:34:00 | Thanks. I had read about fsck but that didnt work. Gparted would run but there was no tools for testing. Next I tried UBCD. Mostly the disk utilities give a bad command or filemname response. It's anything but user friendly as well. SO... I suppose the question is.... how to run chkdsk from a thumbdrive, or any other better method of determining disk health? |
Tbird650 (6754) | ||
| 1307561 | 2012-10-19 04:11:00 | Windows recovery console has CHKDSK, which you can boot from the XP installation CD - and which you could copy to USB . You should also be able to run CHKDSK from a BartPE disk\USB . telenet . be/Robvdb/BootPEUSB_UK . htm" target="_blank">users . telenet . be Or you could take the HDD out of the machine, put it in another and run CHKDSK from Windows there . As for disk health, it has some bad sectors, sometimes that number will stay stable for a long time but often it will just keep increasing quickly and the drive fails . Personally I don't trust a drive with any reallocated sectors as it usually indicates imminent failure or potential for data loss and more annoyance . |
Agent_24 (57) | ||
| 1307562 | 2012-10-19 05:41:00 | My personal favourite live system for this kind of thing is this (www.sysresccd.org) - very well put together, and contains a large number of extremely useful tools. Most are CLI though, so if you're not comfortable in a Linux shell you may want to give it a miss. | Erayd (23) | ||
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