When Windows fails, the supplied Windows
tools, while very good, are not always able to recover a system. Leo Maxwell
looks into how Linux-based tools are increasingly being used by Windows Techs.
Linux and Windows may be very different
operating systems, but it’s surprising how the use of Linux-based tools is
spreading in the Windows world.
Many PCs now come with a sort of MiniOS,
based on Linux, which can be used to browser the internet and play media
without booting into a full-fat OS such as Windows. But there are many other
ways that Linux can become a valuable tool for the Windows Tech.
File Systems
While Windows is mainly limited to
Microsoft disk formats, namely FAT and NTFS (although both have more than one
version), Linux can recognise and access over 30 different file system formats,
which makes it the ideal platform for disk tools.
From corrupt partition tablets to severely
infected machines, Linux tools come in handy when the host system won’t boot.
Because of the plethora of tools available, it’s sometimes tough to sift
through the cruft and find the ones that are usable.
Some of the tools mentioned in this article
are cross-platform, but many are Linux native, and the live CD versions are
exclusively Linux-based.
It must be stated now that improper use of
many of these tools without adequate knowledge can make things worse, and
irreparably damage a Windows installation. Above all, read the documentation!
Live CD and live USB distros
The most effective tool in the recovery
armoury is a live distro. Many distros such as Ubuntu, OpenSuse or Puppy Linux
can be booted direct from a CD or USB stick. They can be useful in diagnosing
whether there’s a hardware or driver problem with, for example, a network
connection or a graphics card.
The
doggy distro, booted from a USB stick
Most Linux distros will connect to the
internet as a matter of course at boot time, not requiring any drivers to be
downloaded and installed. A range of distros have emerged, tailored to function
as emergency rescue toolkits. They can widely, from command-line basics to
full-blown desktop OSs that give a wide range of tools to mend an ailing OS.
The larger ones like PartedMagic, are aimed at more recent PCs with 512MB or
more of RAM, and an i686 (Pentium4 and above) CPU, but there are stand-alone
ones that are meant for a single job, such as Clonezilla, for example, which
are far less demanding.
Some of the functions that these tools can
offer include:
o
Format internal and external hard drives
o
Move, copy, create, delete, expand and shrink
hard drive partitions
o
Clone your hard drive, to create a full backup
o
Test memory for bad sectors
o
Get on the internet to search for answers, or to
download replacements for missing, damaged or faulty Windows drivers
o
Gain access to non-booting systems in order to
rescue important data, or to repair a broken OS
o
Run anti-virus scans from a read-only medium,
while your OS is not running
o
Benchmark your computer for a performance rating
o
Securely erase your entire hard drive, wiping it
clean from all data
