I have been helping some friends with minor computer problems of late and I found that I have to update my toolbox. A friend managed to screw-up his netbook and we needed to get some information off of it before reloading the OS. My handy BartPE or Linux boot disk (Knoppix) would not work here because netbooks do not have an optical drive. What to do? Switch to using a thumb drive Linux installation. This has become much, much easier of late.
1. Download you favorite Linux distribution ISO.
2. Grab a copy of PenDriveLinux USB creator.
3. Attach the thumb drive of your choice and run the tool.
You now have a fully functioning Linux boot drive on the flashdrive. An added bonus is that the drive itself is FAT32 so once you boot into Linux you can copy information from the netbook over to the flash drive. You can even continue using the flashdrive for general use if it has enough space. just remember the limits of FAT32 and don’t try to copy a file over 2 GB in size.
Well Rounded Development 