How To: Boot A Dead PC With Nothing But A Thumb Drive

But with the advent of the tiny, lightweight, and portable USB key drive, system builders now have a new tool. I believe the USB key drive could alter—even usurp—our old rescue and recovery methodologies forever.

The USB key drive—also known as a flash or thumb drive—is most commonly deployed as a storage or backup utility. But with a few simple conversion steps, you can transform any key drive into a full-blown rescue and recovery tool. In this Recipe, I'll take you through those steps. I'll also outline the advantages, and a few disadvantages, of transforming the key drive into a bootable utility.

While there are a couple of software installations involved, both are freeware and easy to deal with. You'll also need another PC along for the ride when actually performing a full rescue and/or extensive data recovery—but more on that later. Also required are any boot floppy images necessary for the recovery process, which we'll also get into more detail about later. Finally, while the examples I provide were done on a Linux box, everything I discuss in this Recipe will work on Windows systems, too.

Ingredients

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Here are the essential components you'll need for converting a USB key drive into a bootable utility:

Why Choose RIP Linux and SYSLINUX?

There are several compelling reasons why I recommend the RIP Linux rescue system. Here are the ones I consider most compelling:

While other software choices exist for this task, I consider these solutions overly complicated. For example, Feather and Damn Small Linux (DSL) are two lightweight (50 MB) live-CD distributions. Both distros are designed to fit on small business-card size CDs for promotions and presentations, and they can be easily modified into a respectable rescue system. But they both lack the specialization you'll find in the equally small RIP Linux.

Here are the three distinct advantages to the USB key method:

To be fair, there are a few drawbacks to the USB approach. Here are three of the worst problems I've spotted:

Also, not all USB storage devices—flash or otherwise—are considered the same for rescue and recovery purposes. For example, among the products I tested, neither the Link Depot SD-to-USB adapter with a 1 GB storage card inside, nor the simple Z-Cyber USB 2.0 iDrive worked as a boot device. The Link Depot adapter was unrecognized by the BIOS during boot-up. And the iDrive prevented the BIOS from proceeding through the power-on, self-test (POST) startup sequence. For a system builder seeking to troubleshoot an existing rescue or recovery problem, either device would only complicate matters.

Another issue: Drive labels for USB devices, which are used to distinguish one storage volume from another, vary from one BIOS manufacturer and version to another. Some popular BIOS versions, such as Phoenix Award, identify the first attached USB device as USB-HDD (hard drive). Others see only USB-FDD (floppy drive) or USB-ZIP (ZIP drive) devices.

If the drive label is unclear for a particular BIOS, even with the key plugged in, try setting the boot priority—and first boot device, if applicable—to any available USB device name. Remember, not all BIOSes support bootable USB devices.

That said, the File Allocation Table 16-bit (FAT16) file system format, originally developed for MS-DOS, is used in this Recipe for compatibility with most BIOS makes and models. This will identify either a bootable USB-HDD or USB-FDD device. It is essential for an all-purpose bootable USB recovery solution.

Other Uses For a Bootable USB Key Drive

With a little research and testing, you'll find your transformed key drive can also perform the following tasks:

Eleven Steps Toward a Bootable USB Key Drive

Let's walk through creating and configuring a USB key drive for use as a computer system recovery solution. Here are the 11 steps:

LABEL [entry]
KERNEL [image]
APPEND [value]

LABEL my-diags
KERNEL memdisk
APPEND my-diags.img

Native Capabilities of RIP Linux

Next, I'll walk you through some of the things RIP Linux is capable of doing by itself without additional packages.

The native RIP image is well-stocked with tools to image, edit, and repair disk or file system partitions, burn CD and DVD media, and even mount remote storage volumes via Secure Shell (SSH) using the SSH userspace file system (SSHFS). RIP supports many bus types including IDE, Serial ATA (SATA), and SCSI for common storage drives and pluggable external devices by way of USB and Firewire.

Here's a summary of RIP applications:

When repairing a Windows-based system, there are software tools for changing NT passwords (chntpw), manipulating NTFS volumes (mkntfs, ntfsclone, nftsmount, ntfsresize), and for working with FAT partitions. In fact, Linux offers a wealth of software options, from platform-specific file system tools (RAID, LVM, JFS, XFS, and ReiserFS tools), grub and lilo boot managers, CD and DVD burning applications, and a number of Internet-related utilities (includig Firefox, e-mail agents, news readers, and IRC clients).

Ultimately, the USB key-drive recovery solution saves both time and effort when creating recovery tools, updating them for use with new software, and testing the final product. Unlike a CD image, salvageable data can be copied directly to the USB drive without the need to load an OS or call applications required to store the data. Flexibility is essential to any working recovery solution, since features may need to be added, removed, or changed as necessary; the USB handles all well. Similarly, CD or DVD disc creation requires at least two additional elements: a CD or DVD burner and the accompanying software to create a burnable disc. USB is more efficient, since it is usable as soon as it's plugged into a computer.

JUSTIN KORELC is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas, who specializes in Linux security, networking, and implementation subjects and occasional Windows topics.