Writing.Essential System Recovery Tools
Last updated on Tue Dec 23, 2008 |

Over the years, I've had to recover a lot of computer systems from inexplicable, fatal failures of all sorts. And, all of these experiences for family and friends, my job, and even myself have led me to what I now consider the three most essential tools in my system recovery toolkit. Regardless of whether I'm working on a Windows, Unix-like, or even Mac (x86) machine, I always make sure I have a copy of GParted, Super Grub Disk, and the latest Ubuntu Live CD.

GParted
GParted (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/) is the Gnome Partition Editor. Now, I've used a lot of partition editing applications in the past — the default software that came on CDs packaged with hard drives, operating system vendor's partitioning tools, and even commercial applications like PowerQuest's (now Symantec's) PartitionMagic — but I have absolutely no qualms about saying that nothing has been as powerful, easy to use, or consistently effective for me as GParted.

So, what is a partition editor and what role does it play in your system recovery toolkit?

Simply put, many hard drives are divided up into separate sectors called partitions. The reasons for the divisions are varied. Sometimes it's to separate out operating system data from application data, sometimes it's to work around operating system restrictions where the overall hard disk size is larger than what the operating system can work with, and sometimes it's to install multiple operating systems on a single hard drive. More technical details about partitions go beyond the scope of this article, but there's actually a pretty nice summary over on Wikipedia. (On a side note, at the time of this writing, there's even a screenshot of GParted on the Wikipedia entry page for disk partitioning!)

Not surprisingly, you'll want to turn to GParted any time system recovery involves editing your partition tables. One of the best things about GParted is that it has support for a very wide range of partition types, which means that you can fix your partition table problems regardless (virtually) of the operating system installed on the partition. Plus, GParted can also make a lot of typically difficult tasks simple. A very straightforward (non-disaster recovery) scenario for this could be wanting to grow or shrink a hard disk partition. For example, maybe you installed two different operating systems on the same hard drive and originally gave them each 100GB of a 200GB hard drive. Over time, you may realize that you actually use one of the operating systems much more frequently than the other so you want to give it more of the overall hard drive space. GParted can easily walk you through taking unused space from one partition to give to the other partition.

GParted is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is free of charge.

Super Grub Disk
Super Grub Disk (http://www.supergrubdisk.org/) is an application developed by Adrian Raulete (http://adrian15.raulete.net/) for altering and fixing a Master Boot Record (MBR) or boot loader configuration. Or, in the Super Grub Disk website's own words: "We want Linux newbies to restore their new toy, but also help the Linux advanced user make potentially dangerous operations to the MBR in a safe way. Super Grub Disk is also a teaching tool to help you learn more about bootloaders and the booting process."

Don't be fooled by the Grub name or references to Linux in the statement above, though. While Super Grub Disk can definitely be used to fix problems with the GNU GRUB boot loader on your Linux-based computer, it can also be used to fix problems in a Microsoft Windows MBR as well. In fact, I've used this tool on more than one occasion to recover systems that didn't even have any Unix-like operating system installed on them!

If you ever find yourself facing a stack of booting problems, I highly recommend going straight to http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/Boot_Problems#README_FIRST, looking for a description of your problem and downloading a copy of this very powerful software to set your system straight.

Super Grub Disk is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is free of charge.

Ubuntu LiveCD
"How is installing Linux going to fix my other operating system problems?" you ask. (Although I'm tempted to make one of a dozen or more jokes in response to that question, I'll control myself.)

For those of you not familiar with the concept of a LiveCD, let me explain. A LiveCD is a complete operating system on CD-ROM that is able to run from that CD-ROM in a wholly self-sufficient way. By telling your computer to boot from the LiveCD, you load up the alternate operating system without permanently modifying your hard drive(s) in any way. This is a perfectly safe way to try out another operating system, while keeping your current one intact.

In other words, you won't really install Linux, you'll just boot into it.

Although I'm sure there are many times that this could be a useful technique, here are just a few:

• Easily test whether a problem is software- or hardware-based. If your keyboard suddenly stops responding under Microsoft Windows XP, but it functions normally for the Ubuntu LiveCD, then you're not dealing with a hardware problem.
• Access data on the hard drive that you can't reach because the operating system associated with that data has been irreparably corrupted. (For more information on this topic, see Bypassing Windows Login Screen on this site. And, yes, I did lift the description of a LiveCD above directly from that page.)
• Edit configuration files on the hard disk that you can't get to because of boot failures that weren't solved by Super Grub Disk.

In general, being able to boot into a fully-functioning operating system running parallel to another operating system installed on your computer can be a very useful way to recover or edit data on an otherwise unusable system.

The Ubuntu distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is free of charge. And, like I've mentioned elsewhere on this site, there are a number of other distributions (Knoppix, Damn Small Linux, Puppy Linux, etc) that could all be used in place of Ubuntu. I personally suggest Ubuntu, because in my experience, it's one of the easiest distributions for people completely unfamiliar with Linux to use and because I've had the best success rate with automatically finding and connecting to just about any hardware I've thrown at it. You may have as much or more success with another distribution, though.

So, that's it. The three tools that I consider to be the most essential to anyone's system recovery toolkit. If you have other applications and software packages that you consider crucial, I'd love to hear about them. Just send me a message at dave@caretcake.com — if I like it enough, I'd be happy to add your suggestions to this page and maybe even my own toolkit.