PUBLIC MARKS from decembre with tags boot & opensource

Why limit yourself to just one? Here’s how to combine your favorite repair disks together to create the ultimate repair toolkit for broken Windows systems—all on a single flash drive. If you need to clean up an infected system, we’d absolutely recommend the BitDefender CD, since it’s auto-updating. Best bet? Create your ultimate boot disk with as many of the different utilities as your flash drive can hold. To create the rescue disk, a USB flash drive with a decent amount of space—for our purposes, 2 GB is the minimum size, but you’d be better off with something a little bigger if you want to put a lot of repair disks on it, especially the larger ones. To create the custom drive, we’ll use a small piece of software called SARDU, which combines a bunch of functionality into a single package—you can use it to download the ISO images, write everything to the USB drive, or create an ISO image that you could burn to an optical disc—though obviously you’re space-limited in that case.

How to create a Multiboot USB Flash Drive that you can use to Boot Multiple ISO Files from USB. Please note that you might need a 8GB-16GB or larger USB flash device to be able to support every bootable ISO entry. I will update and add more Bootable ISO files to the list as I find the time to test them. You can also contact me to submit working Bootable Linux ISO menu.lst entries for inclusion.

Ever get the urge to try out a bunch of Linux distros at once? Maybe you’re hosting a Linux installation party. Here’s an easy way to get a bunch of Live CDs working from a single thumb drive. 10 Distributions, You Say? MultiSystem is a really easy tool made to run on Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros that you can use to play with various LiveCDs at once, or to create the ultimate recovery device. If you don’t use Ubuntu, you can use an Ubuntu Live CD to install MultiSystem so that you can create your super live USB drive without having to run Linux as your main OS. It’s best to download your ISOs ahead of time, and select a USB drive large enough to house them all. I actually went with an 8 GB SD card (used via a USB adapter). Here are some of the popular and interesting distros I used.

Linux only: QuickStart, a free automation utility for Ubuntu Linux systems, makes it easy to perform partial or full system backups of any partition, synchronize folders and update them on a schedule, and take care of other tasks a beginner would normally need to spend serious time researching. The tiny app opens a simple interface listing your choices, although dialog prompts guide you through any steps requiring input. The tools for installing DVD playing codecs, backing up your Master Boot Record, and creating synchronized backups seem particularly helpful, and while I haven't tested every function, a handful of them completed without any problems. QuickStart is a free download for Ubuntu systems only; both links below carry non-terminal installation instructions for the script.