Last week we learned how to rescue a failing hard drive by copying files to a second local hard drive. You can also copy files over the network, which is useful for nearly any problem, whether it's software or hardware. You need a second PC running sshd. Suppose the second PC is named filestore. Boot SystemRescueCD on the sick computer, then use the scp command to copy your important files

You turn on your trusty old Linux box, and things are going well as you pass through the boot loader, until the disk check reveals that your hard drive partition table is corrupt, and you are unable to access your machine. You need a good rescue disk — and the best way to get one is to create your own.

How to convince a Mac OS X or Windows user to try GNU/Linux? Installing the desired distribution in a Virtual Machine? Read them all those FAQs about partitioning your hard drive for a dual-boot system? No, no - there's an easier way:

Mary, the daughter of a friend is in college: her Windows XP laptop constantly reboots and, we suspect, has a bad hard drive. The system will boot a live CD (Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Desktop), and data on the hard drive can be read. During boot, the live CD identifies disk errors and tries unsuccessfully to repair them.

Xubuntu is a derivative of Ubuntu Linux that uses the Xfce desktop environment for the user interface. It is one of the official derivatives of Ubuntu Linux. The intent is for Xubuntu to be easy to use while being attractive and light on system resources. For this review I tested the 32 bit Live environment as well as the 32 bit version installed to the hard drive of my MSI Wind netbook.

If your hard drive is unbootable due to corrupt partition tables, computer viruses, system errors, and other non-mechanical issues, you may consider using a hard drive data recovery tool to save your precious files or data from being permanently wiped out. Thankfully, there are tons of available Linux-based rescue tools that can get the job done quickly and easily.

You turn on your trusty old Linux box, and things are going well as you pass through the book loader, until the disk check reveals that your hard drive partition table is corrupt, and you are unable to access your machine. You need a good rescue disk -- and the best way to get one is to create your own.

If you want to add more storage to your machine by adding a new hard drive,and you have already a linux system installed in the first hard drive, then just follow this tutorial.

One of the (very many) areas in which Linux has pulled ahead of the pack is with live, complete Linux distributions on every form of removable media. Tiny Linuxes to full-blow kitchen sink Linuxes boot and run from USB sticks and drives, Compact Flash cards, CDs and DVDs; so they never need to touch the hard drive, or even have a hard drive present. Some of them run entirely in memory.