Create an All-in-One Boot USB Disk

Recently, A friend of mine was locked out of his Windows laptop due to a certain virus. While I have always found that the best anti-virus solution has been Microsoft Security Essentials, we are talking about the "cure" here rather than "prevention". I knew what was in store - I had to use a rescue disk and check the drive. And then (possibly) perform a repair of the Windows installation. If the above two processes didn't work,  I would have to use a Live CD to extract the important data and then format the HDD. The problem - I had only one USB drive! If I had to go through all of these steps, I would waste a tremendous amount of time just making different disks. Not to mention, I would require access to a running computer throughout.

Enter YUMI.With this brilliant tool, you can install multiple distributions on your USB drive. Moreover, it supports a huge list of anti-virus tools and system tools apart from the popular Windows and Linux distributions. It is extremely use this tool in Windows and it can run (without the format drive feature) in Linux through Wine. A detailed documentation along with a list of known issues has been provided on their  web page. Of course, a large USB disk is also required. I would suggest keeping at least the following on your All-in-One Boot Disk:

1. Operating System
Because I have a dual boot on my laptop with Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04, I have kept copies of both of these. The advantage of keeping Ubuntu is that it comes with a Live CD that will help you recover data in case of a major Windows meltdown. If you do not have any version of Linux installed and do not have enough space for Ubuntu on your USB disk, you can make use of the extremely small Linux distributions like Damn Small Linux (~50 MB) or TinyCore (~12 MB).

2. Antivirus Tools
These are a must-have because of all the vulnerabilities your Windows is prone to. Even with a fully functional antivirus on your computer, the importance of a rescue disk cannot be emphasized enough. For this the ISOs offered by Kaspersky, AVIRA and BitDefender are good options. Some people have complained about problems with using Kaspersky's Rescue Disk, though.

3. System Tools
These are good to have in case you want to partition hard disks, diagnose for certain hardware failures or to simply crack your computer's password for the forgetful ones. There are a lot of tools available for this purpose, the most popular ones being GParted, Ultimate Boot CD and OPhcrack. The number of tools offered for this purpose is so vast that it could be a separate blog post in itself.

There is also an ISO available called Hiren's Boot CD. It has a lot of tools included onto a Windows XP boot disk. Even though there have been certain references to it being illegal, I will not recommended it for completely different reasons. In my experience, this particular ISO comes with so many needless tools that it actually makes the recovery process more painful than a plain format and reinstall. Use this only if you don't have any clue about what is wrong with your computer.

Lessons learnt:
1. Always have an anti-virus installed on your Windows PC
2. Always keep a regular backup of your important data, either on an external drive or using a service like Dropbox/Ubuntu One/Google Drive
3. Always keep your OS partition separate from your data partition
4. An all-in-one USB disk makes a quick-fix repair easy and painless

Installing Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat

Courtesy: Ubuntu Official Website

For all of you whose blood begins to boil at the very mention of Windows, its time for a change. And the most user-friendly alternative out there is Ubuntu. I would even go the extent of saying that Ubuntu is, in fact, better than Windows in terms of stability, security and cost. The Ubuntu community is vast, helpful, and constantly developing better alternatives. If you really cannot let go of Windows, you can always try a dual boot, which is made easier by installing Windows first and then using wubi.
For first timers, the Ubuntu website and the Ubuntu wiki, together form a great way to get started. The installation process is trivial, and most of it has already been documented. At this point I would just like to add that Ubuntu Desktop should be the one you should be aiming to install. Go for the Ubuntu Netbook version ONLY IF you don't have a decently powerful laptop or are really looking for that extra juice out of your battery.

What I intend to discuss here is the installation of Ubuntu using a pen drive, for which you should follow the steps below:

1. Download the version of Ubuntu you want to install. Get it from the official website or download via torrents. I prefer to download torrents as the chances of downloading a corrupt ISO are minimal.
For Ubuntu Desktop Edition:
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/alternative-download
For Ubuntu Netbook Edition:
http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook/get-ubuntu/download
http://www.ubuntu.com/netbook/get-ubuntu/alternative-download

2. Check the md5 sum of the downloaded file. The md5 checksum is a sure way of verifying if the downloaded file is error free.
More information and utilities to check md5sum:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM

3. If your pen drive is larger than 1 GB, you would want to partition it first. When I tried installing Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron 1420, it would get stuck on "Preparing to install". It took me a while (a whole night, in fact ;)) to figure out that it was because of the pen drive itself. After making a primary partition of about 700 MB, the installer worked just fine.
An excellent guide to partitioning your USB drive:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html#partitioning

4. Now download a suitable software to write the downloaded ISO to the primary partition of the USB drive. I used the Universal USB Installer from my Windows 7 machine.
More information on writing ISO to USB:
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download


5. Now fire up your computer and enter the BIOS setup. Change the boot order to increase the priority of the USB drive to highest.
Guide to changing the boot sequence in your BIOS:
http://pcsupport.about.com/od/fixtheproblem/ss/bootorderchange.htm

6. And you're done! Reboot with the USB drive plugged in and choose Install Ubuntu. You can also try Ubuntu as a Live OS, before installing it on your computer. The best part of this is that you use your computer and browse the internet normally during the install. Now, that is cool!