How to back up to LIVE CD now so your computer is safe!
You’ve heard it before, back up your hard drive. And kind of like the adult voices in Peanuts comics strips, you tend to tune out the droning noise and attend to more pressing matters, like getting stuff done and making deadlines. Before you know it, you have a full year of important work, photos, files on your hard drive and it’s still not backed-up. Time creeps along, and suddenly BAM, you’re staring into a blue blank screen and find yourself repeating over and over, “I shoulda, woulda, coulda.” To get life again, you even re-install Windows, but it still won’t reboot.
This happens to a lot of people all the time so we are writing to spare you the horror of it by showing you how to get a Live CD so you are up and running again in a matter of minutes (along with screenshots).
Live CD
This refers to an operating system that is executed on boot and not installed on your hard drive. The benefit of having a Live CD on hand, is in the event your system crashes and burns, you can load the Live CD and be online and back in business within a few minutes. The Live CD does not alter your original operating system but rather, loads its files into RAM. Obviously, having your computer back to life with a Live CD is preferable to the grip of death it was in just a few moments earlier. With a Live CD loaded, and your computer humming along, life is once again good.
The majority of Live CD’s are based on the Linux kernel which is open source and free. With a LiveDistro you can access information on your internal and/or external hard drives, or other media such as USB Flash drives.
First you need an ISO Burner
To burn your Live CD, you need an ISO burner. ISO refers to an international standard created for storing data on CD-ROM, and is known as a disc image. The ISO image contains all the file system metadata, including boot code, structures, and attributes. All of this information is contained in a single file.
An ISO burner is a special software app that can burn a disc image. Certain ISO burners work with certain operating systems. Below are links to two free ISO burners, which are highly rated and as a bonus, are from sites without the usual freeware ad clutter. Both are decent and will get the job done, however, Infrarecorder has a nicer user interface and a few more options.
- Burn CD and DVD images (DVD support is only available on Windows Vista), copy disks, make images of existing data CD’s and DVD’s and create ISO images
- Works with Windows XP, 2003 and Vista
- Create data, audio, video, and mixed-mode discs; record dual-layer DVD’s; four methods for erasing discs; record disc images (ISO and BIN/CUE); scan SCSI/IDE bus for devices and capabilities; create disc copies using temporary disc image; import session data from multi-session discs and add more sessions
- Windows 2000, XP, Vista (2.65 Mb).
After you have downloaded an ISO burner, you’re ready to get a Linux Live CD. We recommend Ubuntu for its ease of use and popularity but if you’re the type that likes to zig when others zag, there’s definitely lots of flavors like Fedora and a slew of others for you to try. For the purpose of this exercise, we downloaded Ubuntu so the steps outlined here will be specific to it.
After you have downloaded your Live CD to your desktop, launch your ISO burner and burn Ubuntu or Fedora onto a CD. You will need an 80 minute 700 MB CD to accomplish this. To ensure your disk is 100% accurate, you will then need to perform a CD Integrity Check. This simply searches every file to make sure nothing is corrupted. Be sure to burn the ISO image as a disc image, not in a data format. See screenshots below.
ISO Recorder
Infrarecorder
CD Integrity Check
Load your newly burned Live CD and either turn the computer on or restart. At the CD menu, choose Check CD for defects. Wait for the process to complete. You will get a message if the files are 100% intact. If you get a message showing errors, you will want to get a new CD and burn it again. See Ubuntu screenshot below.
Once you get the all clear, now you can launch the Linux OS from your disc drive and off you go. (This, of course, will require you to power down your system and reboot). The bootable Live CD contains the entire Linux OS, no installation to hard drive required. Some older systems may require you to hold down the tab key while rebooting to boot from the disc drive.
You will come to a welcome screen where you will select “Start or Install Ubuntu” and In a matter of moments, you will see a nice pale orange screen - the screen of life. Now you can use the Linux OS to access your data and surf the internet. Ubuntu comes preloaded with Mozilla Firefox.
You’re back to work and humming along. Life is good. Especially when you’re prepared for the little emergencies life throws at you along the way.
So now that you have your Live CD ready for the inevitable crash, be sure to label it and put it in a safe place. And while you’re on the path of emergency preparedness, it wouldn’t hurt to do the backup procedure you’ve been putting off either. But then, after you tried Ubuntu or Fedora and seen how great it is, you just might not want to go back to Windows and immediately join the 10s of millions who have chosen freedom, security and the wave of the future over the dreaded lockin virus Microsoft!
Posted by FA Editors at 10:05 PM PST
