Being in the IT field, often times one must use a live CD to access a drive without having to go into the computer through the normal operating system boot up (99% of the time Windows). Over the years, there have been many live CDs that have been developed and have used to fix problems. The live CD base tends to focus dominantly on Linux, mainly because Linux is open sourced and all the tools are freely available to many people over the internet. There are some other live CDs on the web that don't use Linux as the base operating system but instead some kind of obscure operating system or even Microsoft Windows. Most of the Linux live CDs are a challenge to make but are better when they are maintained well like some of the live CDs reviewed below. Over the years as problems have occurred in the workplace, five specific live CDs have established themselves and have left a memorable impact. These live CDs are Slax, Ubuntu, Puppy Linux, Parted Magic and UBCD4Win.
Puppy Linux
I first tried out Puppy Linux when I was going through college about two or three years ago. I am sure Puppy has changed much over the years and is probably different now. At that time, what made it a very unique flavor of Linux was that not only was it small but it ran the operating system after it was loaded into RAM at boot time. I remember for my computer, which is about nine years old now at this point, Puppy Linux was very fast and responsive on it. Normally the program resides on the hard drive which makes it a longer process for a program or an action in the operating system to get processed by the processor. Since the whole operating system is loaded from RAM the operating system doesn't have to find the program and load it from the hard drive. Also because of its small size it can easily fit into RAM. Puppy Linux has probably grown since the days I used it but it was a memorable distribution that I would encourage anyone to try.
Ubuntu
Most people who have tried Linux have heard of Ubuntu because it is probably one of the most user-friendly and full-featured distributions there is. The live CD is very well developed and has support for various types of hardware. With Ubuntu you can boot into a live environment and test out the distribution and you don't even have to install it if you don't want to. There is a utility on the live CD that allows you to install it to the hard drive, all from the live environment. The live environment has all the applications that the version you would install on your hard drive if you installed it. Overall, Ubuntu could be one of the most useful and easy to learn distributions of Linux.
Slax
I recently had been using this distribution to do some modifications to some of the files within some Windows installations of work computers. The way Slax works is you go to the website and you choose the programs that you want to install. These programs might have a dependency on another program or library in which the website will tell you what you need to include to get the image to work properly. Once you have every thing you need you download a CD image to burn to a CD. The main concept of Slax that makes it different from most live CDs is that an image is built modularly (which is apparent from the image builder on the website). Slax is also a "live CD only" distribution which could make it excellent for recovery or any other purpose which involves needing to have a live CD environment. Slax is a very clean distribution that can be customized very easily to suit any task.
Parted Magic
Parted Magic is another Linux distribution that is designed to be lightweight and have the necessary components to make it a good recovery disk. I first found out about this distribution when I used an Ultimate Boot CD which had this operating system variant along with some other environments bundled with it. Parted magic comes with Gparted for configuring partitions as well as other programs and libraries that are useful for mounting and examining the hard drive of any platform. You are able to mount partitions of Linux-based systems and you can also mount Windows-based partitions, too. This has been a very useful and versatile variant of Linux when I used it in the workplace.
UBCD4Win
This is the most useful live cd that I have used in the last few years. It comes bundled with software that is used to scan the hard drive for spyware and viruses such as AntiVir and Spybot. The virus definitions can be updated before you build the CD which can make the scans more effective. The CD also has free software that can be used to clean and audit your disk or even your memory. All these programs can be added to the image or removed from the image. This live CD is based off BartPE which is a lightweight version of Microsoft Windows. Within the environment you can read from both Windows and Linux partitions because it has the native Windows read support and special drivers (that can be included in the image) for reading a Linux partition. When you build a UBCD4Win you will need to have a non-OEM Windows CD or else you get errors when trying to build it. I have found this CD to be one of the most versatile and helpful live environments I have ever been exposed to. Because of the familiar programs, it includes (and lets you include) it is simple to use for almost any recovery purpose.
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