Emergency Kit - save your files from a dead OS

How to Create and Use a Linux Mint Mate USB Flash Drive to Recover your Files​

   Note

If you are in a hurry and don't want to read the whole saga, skip to point #2 and watch the videos. That will give you enough information to do the job.
The method proposed here is really extremely easy. Even someone with little computer experience should be able to deal with it.

   Information

I am now getting suggestions for additional use of Mint Mate on the USB flash drive. I will list those in random order as they come in. Feel free to make suggestions on the thread and I will include them.

• It is a very safe environment to operate on the internet. Malware infections are quasi impossible and should they really happen you can recreate the flash drive very easily.
• Very often it is difficult or impossible to delete files under Windows. With Mint Mate on the flash drive you have an easy tool to accomplish those deletions.

1. Introduction


A total OS crash is not uncommon and then the last resort is very often to reinstall the operating system. The users who made provisions for that case by separating their user data into a data partition, or making frequent images, can easily recover. However, there are many that did not take any precautions and are desperately trying to recover their user data which is sitting on the OS partition that is no more accessible.

The traditional advice is to salvage the data with a live Linux CD from Knoppix, Puppy, DSL or alike. That works fine if you are familiar with any of those programs or take the time to understand them. But they all have one thing in common - they are very Linux and somewhat alien for a Windows user.

One Linux distro which feels comfortable for a Windows user is Mint Mate. There is quasi no learning requirement because things work in a very similar way as they work in Windows. You can judge for yourself by watching the second video.

The emergency kit I propose consists of a persistent Mint Mate OS on a USB flash drive. That means that any setup or modification you make to Mint Mate on the flash drive will be preserved and you don't have to redo it the next time you boot from the flash drive. The setup of such a drive is extremely simple as you will see in the first video.



2. Preparation and Requirements

We will use Mint Mate 14 which is the latest version and can be download from here. The download will take some time because it is 966MB large. And if you want the latest Mint Mate 17, it can be downloaded from here. The characteristics are the same as for Mint Mate 14.

Note: I haven noticed that not all download sites give you the same edition. In fact the downloads from some sites don't work as described. I suggest you use the James Madison Univerity site because that one I know works correctly.

We will also download and save the Universal USB Installer from here. With this program we can create the Mint Mate flash drive very, very easily.

As last component we need an empty flash drive formatted in Fat32 of at least 2GB but bigger is better. I use a 16GB USB2 flash drive which works very well. A USB3 flash drive would be even better. My USB2 flash drive has a data transfer rate of 30MB/sec and an access time of 0.8ms as measured with HD Tune.



3. Installation of Mint Mate on the Flash Drive

I will explain the extremely easy installation process of Mint Mate with the Universal USB Installer in a short video. Depending on the speed of your USB flash drive, that should take between 10 and 20 minutes.






4. Recover files with the Mint Mate flash drive

Here again a short video is the easiest way to explain the recovery procedure. This video was taken with a program installed and running on the flash drive.

The Mint Mate on the flash drive is a fully operational operating system. Due to the persistent nature of the installation it can be setup, tuned, and tweaked like an operating system on a system disk and the settings will remain. I often use this Mint Mate flash drive to run a PC. It is a very safe and fast method to navigate on the internet. Another safe method is to run Mint Mate in a virtual partition.

In the next chapter you find tutorials that explain how to setup Mint Mate and how to install it in a virtual partition.





5. Setup of Mint Mate




These tutorials explain how to setup Mint Mate. The first 7 videos cover the following subjects

• Basic setup after installation
• Refining the Theme and Skin
• Start Menu and Taskbar settings
• Terminal window setup
• Installing and uninstalling Programs
• Screen Recording
• Screenshots and snips

In addition, there is a link to a PDF with the topic : Installation of Mint Mate in VMware Player. This section contains a written tutorial and three videos.

If you are interested in the subject, download the control sheet (a PDF) from my Skydrive

Related Tutorials

---

• http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...ate-live-cd-dvd-usb-use-emergency-backup.html
• How to Copy & Paste in Recovery Console on Windows 7 or Vista

 

[Night Hawk]

Well the thing about the VM ware tools option is seen mainly when first getting any VM set up and that option will appear with a button along with message asking it you want to install right away and simply click the install tools button. There's not any manual text option at least on the Windows flavor of VM ware simply the option on the VM window at the bottom right side.

It won't hurt to get basically some familiarity with the Bash commands even you are not looking to run any distro as your main OS on an older machine turned into Linux box as many have already done. The newer they get however the further away from entering manual commands you get as has already been seen over the years with Windows.

Also you will be finding that just about everything is now leaning towards touchscreen in even the open source community as the latest basic $35 cell phone is now touchscreen only! No more buttons to push on those even.

Meanwhile here's a look at the 17.2 release of LMDE or Linux Mint Debian Edition. Put Teamviewer on the VM as well as the physical Windows installs and have tested connecting remotely from VMs!You will notice the prompt there about hardware rendering not being available since that is on a VM.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Thanks Colin yes mate I am fairly disillusioned with Windows right now and I did see a that terminal thing had to be used a bit but no matter and thanks for the heads up. The only thing I find a little difficult is that the Linux forum is very slow and unlike an email for Windows forum replies one doesn't get one.

Night Hawk mate attached is a [ic of that screen res.

 

[whs]

John, here are a few links that may be useful:

HTG Explains: Why You Shouldn?t Be Scared of the Terminal on Linux

SectionPage | Linux Survival

Tips and Tricks for Linux Mint after Installation [Mint 13 to 16 - MATE Edition] | Gizmo's Freeware

 

[ICIT2LOL]

John, here are a few links that may be useful:

HTG Explains: Why You Shouldn?t Be Scared of the Terminal on Linux

SectionPage | Linux Survival

Tips and Tricks for Linux Mint after Installation [Mint 13 to 16 - MATE Edition] | Gizmo's Freeware

Thanks Wolfgang I am going to keep all the links in a doc so I can access them easy.

 

[whs]

But don't forget to read them, LOL.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

But don't forget to read them, LOL.

You are ahead of me as usual time is my problem not enough hours in the day..

I meant to ask Colin too I am setting up the VM in my Windows 7 machine so once I get that resolution right that bash list that still applies in that instance?

 

[Night Hawk]

Are you trying to run the distro on a machine with a 24" display? Your specs show one pc with a larger lcd which is where that type of problem would likely be seen! Here I have live boots with the previously years back 17" and then onto the 19" and 20" screens and the live display always fills the screen. The other image was that of LMDE on a VM with the borders you can manually drag to expand like with any typical explorer window when not having the window maximized.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yes mate the installed laptop has full screen for the Mint the pic is of what I see on a 27" monitor hooked to my main laptop in VM ware mode.

Now if you are wondering the main laptop has full HD @ 1920x1080 so naturally I thought it would display as it does and other program I might have open, and I have the monitor hooked up via HDMI.

 

[Night Hawk]

From what I have found over the years the live boot should see about 1024x786 while the custom install seemed to automatically pick up on the 1440x900 with the 19" and close to that on the 20" desktop displays here. A live dvd would always see full screen on any laptop using it's own screen.

Haven't attempted connecting the 24" led tv up by HDMI as of yet to test the old laptop to see it needs to see the cmos cleared and when the display either went entirely or somehow got switched to the external unfortunately vga while it still has the HDMI option as well. With the original presently out first assuming the drive had gone until nothing all would come up onscreen A live boot would be the item when getting around to that.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yes the Toshiba install res is the 1366x768 full screen it is just the VM ware set up that seems not to want to go full screen but I shall have a fiddle with it when I can.

 

[Golden]

You need to install VMWARE TOOLS.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

You need to install VMWARE TOOLS.

Ok mate I just need the time right now as I have a backlog of stuff to catch up on.

 

[Night Hawk]

Yes the Toshiba install res is the 1366x768 full screen it is just the VM ware set up that seems not to want to go full screen but I shall have a fiddle with it when I can.

I never am able to go full screen here but when not maximizing things you can click on the border to expand a window including the Workstation Player out quite a bit. If you look back at Post #140 you will notice I would have that out further but have the side bar gadget in use on Windows 10 while the UltraMON smart taskbar is in use on the 7 side of the dual boot. The one difference however is the snipping there is showing LMDE on Hyper-V not VM ware in the screen there while I click and stretch the Workstation Player windows most of the way on 7.

You need to install VMWARE TOOLS.

That has nothing to do with the VM ware Workstation 12 Player's window as far as size. You can't go entirely full screen like you can with a Youtube video for example. The tools are for adjusting things on the VM itself as far as the other settings while adjusting the screen resolution will change the size of the default window that opens up.

A VM will always have the borders like the status bar seen on the bottom of any IE window. Booting from live media however is always completely full screen since that is the only display signal coming into the video card since nothing in Windows is running. You have to remember there are device drivers like graphics and sound drivers being loaded on a VM since that simply shares resources with the host OS! Plus you have a virtual environment running on Windows with certain limitations imposed by default. The VM simply has to run in a windowed environment while the manual click and drag seems to be the best method to see the VM window as large as it will get.

 

[Golden]

My VM runs full screen without any borders at all at 1920x1080 on a 24" monitor...no dragging required.

This is achieved by installing VMWareTools to enable the selection of the additional resolutions not normally available with a vanilla install on Linux Mint 17.x.



http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=340

 

[Night Hawk]

And what did I say back in Post #140?

Well the thing about the VM ware tools option is seen mainly when first getting any VM set up and that option will appear with a button along with message asking it you want to install right away and simply click the install tools button. There's not any manual text option at least on the Windows flavor of VM ware simply the option on the VM window at the bottom right side.

And if you look at the next screen posted in Post #141 the Install tools button is in plain sight on the bottom border of the screen ICTI2LOL posted right afterwards. And you are still in a windowed mode there as well.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Ok have got it now well it was just and experiment really I suppose if I want Mint or Ubuntu on the machine I shall just use the bootable stick as the old eyes are not that good right now and squinting at that small screen is hard work. But thanks for helping me out.

 

[Golden]

And what did I say back in Post #140?

Well the thing about the VM ware tools option is seen mainly when first getting any VM set up and that option will appear with a button along with message asking it you want to install right away and simply click the install tools button. There's not any manual text option at least on the Windows flavor of VM ware simply the option on the VM window at the bottom right side.

And if you look at the next screen posted in Post #141 the Install tools button is in plain sight on the bottom border of the screen ICTI2LOL posted right afterwards. And you are still in a windowed mode there as well.

:sarc:

 

[ICIT2LOL]

And what did I say back in Post #140?

Well the thing about the VM ware tools option is seen mainly when first getting any VM set up and that option will appear with a button along with message asking it you want to install right away and simply click the install tools button. There's not any manual text option at least on the Windows flavor of VM ware simply the option on the VM window at the bottom right side.

And if you look at the next screen posted in Post #141 the Install tools button is in plain sight on the bottom border of the screen ICTI2LOL posted right afterwards. And you are still in a windowed mode there as well.

:sarc:

Oh well mate I said I am still not really that good at this stuff just yet and I have had to deal with other things I will not bore you with plus work all which gives me only shorts bursts of time on this machine.
I will try again and let you both how I go.

Sorry if I have been a pain and I do appreciate the help truly.

 

[whs]

For the screensize that should not be too difficult. Go into Control Center and make the settings there - under Monitors.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Thanks again Wolfgang