Linux Saved me and my friend's HDD today!!

Hey guys I thought I'd share this little story with you.

A friend of mine decided to install Windows 7 on his Fujitsu-Siemens laptop to try it out. After that didn't work out, he wanted to put back his XP.

So he asked me and his brother for help. After an unsuccessful installation because of some stupid partitioning by XP setup, and of course our "wise" decisions, the C: partition became D: and the other way around.

Problem was that the original D: partition was full of all sorts of media. And I mean full: 0MB Free. As this partition became C: Windows could not copy its initial installation files to start setup.

So there was no way we could install Windows again without formatting HDD and thus losing all the data on it.

So then it hit me!! I went on ubuntu.com and downloaded the .iso file, easily burnt a CD on my mac and then booted a Live Ubuntu on the Fujitsu-Siemens laptop.

I'm very much impressed how fast it booted off the CD and instantly recognized my external HDD (a 320 WD passport) and now I'm in the process of backing up all the data on it.

After that, I'm going to format the internal HDD on the laptop and do a fresh Windows install.

The reason I posted was to thank everybody for this great OS. And everyone who has contributed to the whole Linux world. Your efforts are very much appreciated!

I guess you don't really appreciate something until you really need it and most importantly it comes through for you.

Thanks and I'll be a Linux fan forever. Even though I'm sure I'm not going to use it, since my work requires software currently unavailable for Linux.

Cheers!

 

Linux is great, as soon as it scales the font when you zoom in, I'm switching all my machines except one(I have a zune, and I LOVE it!).

 

Besides, of course, being a great OS, Linux also excels for me in right that: live-booting to backup/restore data and do these tricks (formatting, partitioning..). Sometimes people happen to crash their Windows out, and any Ubuntu cd might be the hero in these cases.

I never leave home without Linux in the backpack, who knows when you might need it

 

I never leave home without my 8GB USB stick in my pocket... it's got a USB bootable version of the System Rescue CD on it, as well as portable versions of many different Windows apps for recovering data and so on. And that's only like, 200MB or so of the total space on the drive... still plenty of room for ferrying videos and such about And it's a lot easier to keep track of and not break while in your pocket.

 

Silly question: is it possible to partition a usb stick? I guess the answer is no, but... It might be nice to have more than one linux distro on a stick.

Come to think about it, I don't recall to have ever seen a usb hard disk partitioned...

 

Yes, yes it is. Some vendors even sell them pre-partitioned for special software.

 

You can partition a USB stick. I have one partitioned for my NSLU2, one for Debian, one for my apache server home directories.

 

Linux FTW. There's a reason I keep a few LiveCD disks in my laptop bag.

 

Linux owns....if only it had good game support then it would be the best OS i've ever used.

Windows 7 although is starting to grow on me....

 

Godd, thanks for answering (I've been a bit busy these days so I could not thank you before). I remember I tried to partition a 64 MB usb stick but with no success, ages ago. Perhaps it was too small to accomodate partitions, or maybe I did not have the right tools. I'll empty my 4 GB stick and will try again with GParted.

I take it that once a partioned stick is connected to the PC, several disks will pop up as available, right?

 

The other day I picked up a brand new hard drive and tried to install windows and kept on getting blue screens. So I install linux mint. After using the HD for a while to see if it was ok I then installed xp without problems.

 

I love how most of distros include memtest+ on the booting menu as default. I once had to use it when my sister's lappy constantly BSOD'd and boom! memtest reported a faulty memory. After I replaced the memory the system went back to normal.