Kyle Sexton wrote:
Just picked up a 1G USB Flash drive and am trying to decide which system rescue distro to put on it. Anyone have any experience with these or other live rescue systems?
Recovery is Possible (RIP) Linux, http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/ SystemRescueCD, http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page INSERT, http://www.inside-security.de/insert_en.html
Of these, I've only used SystemRescueCD, which I morphed into a bootable DVD to do 'bare metal' restore of Windows XP systems.
SystemRescueCD was very flexible and easy to configure to my needs. I patched it to boot off an external USB CD, and even installed it to a HDD (also external USB) to use as a mastering system for creating new XP recovery DVDs. There are several places to 'hook' customizations, so it's easy to use as a general-purpose recovery platform or morph into a more focused utility.
While I'm sure there's some stuff you can't do with SystemRescueCD, I can heartily recommend it as a good place to start. As a bonus, it's not all that big (unless it's really gotten bloated since I was playing with it).