Any Live Linux's with USB drive Support?

**ShyguyXPC** · December 17th, 2009, 05:03 AM

Wondering if anyone knows of any good Live Linux's with USB drive support that I can burn to DVD and boot a laptop with so I can transfer some data from the slow Windows XP drive to a USB stick before wiping the system clean and reinstall Windows on it.

My brothers friend has an older Pentium 3/Pentium M/Pentium 4 (forget which CPU is in it...) Mobile laptop and the old 12GB 5400RPM drive is slow enough as it is, but with the age of the install of XP on it, and some of the crap in the background its just atrociously slow, about 10+ minutes from cold boot to just get basic limited use of the mouse cursor, and thats if the CPU can free up enough resources to let you select something.

I want to be able to search the drive for any important data files he may have on there, before wiping it clean and try to make it usable to some extent as a laptop, until he can afford some upgrades on it (more SODIMM DDR RAM, I think its running 512MB now, would like to get that up to 1GB at least for him, Larger PATA/IDE 7200RPM drive, already found some parts on newegg for him)

but my experience with Linux is rather limited, I've used Live CD's before, but have always had a 2nd or 3rd Hard drive installed in the system to transfer files to, never dealt with an external USB Drive before in a Live Linux.

and since my experience is rather limited, I'd rather not have to add USB support and whatever else for modules or whatever to the core Live OS for support.

TIA to any good Suggestions for Linux Live discs.

**vandamme** · December 22nd, 2009, 01:10 PM

I have a 5 year old laptop with 256M that dual boots XP and LinuxMint, a variant of Ubuntu. It boots Linux in about half a minute. If I have to boot Windows, I just walk away and come back after my nap. You could reinstall Windows, but don't even THINK about going on the net without antivirus.

**ShyguyXPC** · December 22nd, 2009, 05:52 PM

Ahhh, yeah, thanks for the useless info.

**vandamme** · December 23rd, 2009, 08:37 AM

The point was, why reinstall Windows when you could have a better, more secure operating system that will really fly on 512M?

**Nude_Lewd_Man** · December 23rd, 2009, 09:26 AM

Shy, I'm gonna fire up WKS03 and give Ubuntu (9.04) a trial run...anything in particular you want me to test...?

**stroyal** · December 23rd, 2009, 10:29 AM

Ubuntu runs my USB zip drive. I can't remember if I tried it live, but I think live runs the same as a full install, so it should.
I'll give it a try.

**Nude_Lewd_Man** · December 23rd, 2009, 10:31 AM

That's what I thought, but as I've got a machine that is just sitting there I thought I might as well just test it out properly...

**stroyal** · December 23rd, 2009, 10:48 AM

I have 6 set up at the moment, 2 are to be given away, when I find someone that needs one.
I have 3 more ready to go also.
But I digress, I loaded the Ubuntu live CD and got USB mouse and Zip right away.
No intervention needed.

**ShyguyXPC** · December 23rd, 2009, 06:05 PM

Originally Posted by vandamme

The point was, why reinstall Windows when you could have a better, more secure operating system that will really fly on 512M?

Because its not up to me, its someone elses Laptop I'm working with, and their not very tech oriented... so why in gods name install an OS that's going to confuse the hell out of them even more, and be less compatible with the software they run or use.

Originally Posted by ShyguyXPC

Wondering if anyone knows of any good Live Linux's with USB drive support that I can burn to DVD and boot a laptop with so I can transfer some data from the slow Windows XP drive to a USB stick before wiping the system clean and reinstall Windows on it.

My brothers friend has an older Pentium 3/Pentium M/Pentium 4 (forget which CPU is in it...) Mobile laptop and the old 12GB 5400RPM drive is slow enough as it is, but with the age of the install of XP on it, and some of the crap in the background its just atrociously slow, about 10+ minutes from cold boot to just get basic limited use of the mouse cursor, and thats if the CPU can free up enough resources to let you select something.

I want to be able to search the drive for any important data files he may have on there, before wiping it clean and try to make it usable to some extent as a laptop, until he can afford some upgrades on it (more SODIMM DDR RAM, I think its running 512MB now, would like to get that up to 1GB at least for him, Larger PATA/IDE 7200RPM drive, already found some parts on newegg for him)

but my experience with Linux is rather limited, I've used Live CD's before, but have always had a 2nd or 3rd Hard drive installed in the system to transfer files to, never dealt with an external USB Drive before in a Live Linux.

and since my experience is rather limited, I'd rather not have to add USB support and whatever else for modules or whatever to the core Live OS for support.

TIA to any good Suggestions for Linux Live discs.

On LinuxMint though, its one of the Distro's I have on my list to use on my PC as a 2nd OS to experiment with when I have time to mess with it. but as usual other things seem to come first so never get around to it.

**ShyguyXPC** · December 23rd, 2009, 06:09 PM

Originally Posted by stroyal

I have 6 set up at the moment, 2 are to be given away, when I find someone that needs one.
I have 3 more ready to go also.
But I digress, I loaded the Ubuntu live CD and got USB mouse and Zip right away.
No intervention needed.

So a USB hard drive or Thumb Drive should be recognized right away from with in the OS then?

If So, Cool, and Thanks.

I'll have to download it again and make another disc this weekend and get that taken care of, just so that its done, as soon as he can get the money for the hardware upgrades, I can install those, WinXP, and hopefully he'll have a decent working laptop to use on the road or away from his Apartment where his Game rig will be at.

just need to look up prices on Mini PCI wireless cards and see if one can be installed on his.