I’ve repurposed a 32 GB M.2 SATA SSD as a bootable “USB stick” and I’m putting useful tools on it. So far I’ve got memtest, seatools, gparted live, system rescue, clonezilla, and a live install iso of the distro installed on my PC. What other great bootable tools am I sleeping on?
Not spesifically a tool to put on a USB stick, but Ventoy is worth checking. I’ve had a bit mixed results with it on older hardware but when it works it’s pretty easy to manage your carry-on-tools.
I second Ventoy.
Ventoy is pretty great. Ive screwed quite a few usb sticks by flashing isos and now i can just put all the isos on one drive. Its a good tool.
UNetbootin could be cool, it’ll provide access to mamy iso’s instead of just one.
Distro’s supported:
- Ubuntu - Kubuntu - Xubuntu - Lubuntu - Debian - openSUSE - Arch Linux - Damn Small Linux - SliTaz - Linux Mint - Zenwalk - Slax - Elive - CentOS - FreeBSD - NetBSD - 3CX - Fedora - PCLinuxOS - Sabayon Linux - Gentoo - MEPIS - LinuxConsole - Frugalware Linux - xPUD - Puppy Linux
It can be used to load various system utilities too, such as:
- Parted Magic - SystemRescueCD - Super Grub Disk - Dr.Web Antivirus - F-Secure Rescue CD - Kaspersky Rescue Disk - Backtrack - Ophcrack - NTPasswd - Gujin - Smart Boot Manager - FreeDOS
Testdisk, clamxTK, rkhunter or chkrootkit, mobile verification toolkit, lshw, time shift maybe deja-dup.
I think your idea is a good one. Like a linux Swiss Army knife. You can have lots of tools that you don’t need all the time but might be handy in a pinch. Especially if you don’t have internet.
Testdisk is great. I recently cleaned a drive with diskpart and after the initial 100bpm “oh shit, wrong drive” moment, I fixed the partition structure with testdisk. Took a while, but pretty simple and easy to use.
Medicat
This is the best answer on the thread… It uses ventoy and is like hirens on steroids.
Hiren’s boot disk is the only answer to this question. I heard they updated it a few years ago.
netboot.xyz
chntpwd (Reset credentials on a Windows disk)