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