Hey everyone! I'm a total newbie to Linux, but I remember hearing that people used to run it from a CD to fix issues on computers with Windows failures. I'm curious, is it still possible to do this with a USB drive? I have some old laptops and PCs that I'd like to recover files from. If it is doable, could someone walk me through the steps? Thanks a ton!
6 Answers
You might also want to try using a bootable rescue ISO. If you burn it to a USB or DVD and boot from it, it usually gives you a file explorer to access your Windows files. Just make sure to attach another external drive to save everything you find! You can create a bootable USB using the Windows Media Creation tool, and then handle the ISO from there.
There are tons of options for rescue ISOs you can use. Just like the old CDs, they’re simply ISO files that you can write to a USB. Some popular ones are SystemRescue, Hiren's Boot CD, and Ultimate Boot CD. A mix of Linux-based and WinPE environments, they all work from a USB just fine!
By the way, did anything important get saved online?
Yes, booting from a live USB is basically the same as a live CD/DVD. It's super handy for recovery tasks without needing to install anything.
Other tools you can check out for burning the ISO to USB are Balena Etcher and Unetbootin. Ventoy is particularly handy since it lets you keep multiple ISOs on one USB.
Absolutely! You can download any live Linux ISO and burn it onto a USB drive. If you're on Windows, you can use Rufus for a single ISO or Ventoy if you want to have multiple ISOs on your USB. On Linux, Balena Etcher works great for single ISOs or use Ventoy again for multiple.
Live linux? Is that a distro? Sorry if this is dumb.
So, I can boot them all from USB? I thought they were just for CDs.