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ThioJoe, I must say that you have seriously redeemed yourself from being an active KZfaq troll to being a teacher who teaches everyone who to be their own IT services guy. I really appreciate the change you have taken. Not a lot of people change for the better but you have, keep it up!

I’m also here to mention Ventoy. I have ~20 isos ready to go.

A couple points about the Ubuntu live USB: - Sometimes you can't mount a Windows drive in write mode because it is in some sort of hibernation state. You can bypass this by using the switch remove_hiberfile of the mount command. - You can set up a persistent USB, which will save your Ubuntu configuration even if you shut down the machine. It's a little bit more complicated but easy to follow from any of the many tutorials you can find online.

An Ubuntu drive is handy. One time I had a positioning program that has a boot manager feature built in. I only launched the program and it set the boot manager up, except it didn't actually function. When next I turned my laptop on, it showed me the program's logo and a blank boot menu. Basically locked out of my own computer, I contacted the company whose logo plagued my laptop. While dealing with the support, I remembered I have an Ubuntu CD, from the time back when Ubuntu would send you CDs for free. It let me bypass the faulty boot menu and access my files. I asked the support lady if this could help. She told me to delete a file or two, and that neutralized the rogue program. Ubuntu live CD saved my laptop. Bootable USB drives are basically that.

If you have a big enough USB drive, you can use Ventoy! It's a tool that makes your USB bootable from BIOS/UEFI and MBR/GPT partition tables (literally any PC) and you just drag the ISO files into it. When booting it displays a list of your ISOs and you can select wich one to run. Recommendation: Format the biggest partition with as exFAT to have files bigger than 2GB (I.E: Windows 10 ISO file)

if you use ventoy, you can have one USB drive with all the tools on it.

An absolute MUST! I use a free disk imaging software that makes in image of my main drive every week and stores it to a secondary drive. My computer just recently became "unstable" so I booted off a USB prepped thumb drive and restored my system from 7days prior and works like a champ! I also backup my critical data to a NAS every hour so I really lost nothing and had to do a little bit of tinkering with NO major loss! An hour of lost data is nothing compared to MONTHS (or more) and your system setup. I learned that the "hard way" and had almost TOTAL data loss! Since then I have safeguards in place to prevent that from happening and only took less than an hour of my time to setup to be well covered. You really need a NAS (Networked Attached Storage drive) to safeguard yourself doing backups frequently - in my case every hour. Most people don't plan for "total failure" until it happens. I was there too once but not anymore. Windows 10 offers a "back-up" to a NAS to do every hour and backup your stuff but a total image of the disk will restore you in a pinch and then you can copy the backups from your NAS back to your system.

Hello teacher, I just wanted to tell you that every day I learn more about you and for me you are a teacher

I go back to days of actually having Hiren's on a boot CD. Yet you put this all together so well that I get enthusiastic all over again. I had a Ubuntu boot USB in my pocket for serious social occasions, but having Hiren's as well is a real blessing. Thank You!

I wanted to mention that Linux's filesystem drivers for Windows filesystems (NTFS included) can be more stable when a drive is failing. If a drive is not mounting in windows and is nearing death, I highly recommend trying to mount it in Linux like the Ubuntu live mentioned in the video. I have been able to recover data off a drive before it fully died using this quick tip. Just be careful to only copy what you need first.... If a drive is not mounting it could be on its last leg.

There's a tool called ventoy which allows you to have multiples ISOs images on a single USB drive and on boot you can select the one you want to boot from.

7:41 - Thio mentions HP and I instantly start having bloatware flashbacks

Having an image backup on an external drive has saved me several times.

@ThioJoe: Did you ever consider checking out tools like Ventoy? These tools are easy to use multibooters which can run multiple images off one USB-Drive. I found out most systems built after 2009 or so run quite well with it. Be aware: Some systems don't support USB booting if the drive partition exceeds 128 GB. If you can cope with this harsh limit, the Ventoy project would be my first choice for trying out. Especially the feature to drag and drop iso images to the USB drive and having them listed automatically works out really nice!

Wow. oh Wow. This is probably one of the most clear-cut, perfect educational videos I've ever seen. To the point. Perfect voice and clarity. NO SILLY MUSIC!!!. You are a master of this. I need 3 of these drives which I will very soon create. Thank you Sir! And I just subscribed.

Perfect timing as im making a windows boot drive while im watching this video

Everyone ... it's good to listen to ThioJoe and be prepared. ThioJoe ... Thanks for covering this. Yes, each update of Windows is bound to screw something up. Mine's screwed up right now. So, I'm planning to reinstall full when 21H1 comes out.

Other ideas: have an offline Wikipedia flash drive

You missed out the Puppy Linux option. This one is different from other Linuxes because it will save all your work into a compressed file on the hard drive or on the USB. In the hard drive case, as far as Windows is concerned, it is just some binary file on your computer. This means you can have a bootable and usable system that doesn't forget everything each time you reboot. It is also very compact and extremely fast for most of what you need to do. Its design was focused on ease of use for being your "daily driver" OS but it does have gparted and the ability to access your NTFS partition if you tell it to do so.

Seriously I love the direction this channel has taken You have my utmost respect Thio

That‘s a lot to take in! First step: Order some USB drives that are large enough to do all this. Most of mine are from the days when a USB drive with 500 MB was HUGE! Yes, I‘ve been around the block a few times! 😎

I use Ventoy and load all of my boot fix tools along with every os iso to do installs as well. I have about 40 iso's on it. Way easier than keeping track of 4 drives

One of my favorites is DSL -- Damn Small Linux. A lightweight linux that can boot from a flash drive or CD (not DVD, CD). Includes many of the basics, including (and especially) gparted for partitioning.

@11:26 "This is probably going to take a long time", meaning, creating the bootable USB drive. This is why: Since you will be using the USB flash drive for this single purpose, most people will probably get an inexpensive flash drive, which makes sense. But those inexpensive flash drives are inexpensive for a reason: "They are slow", especially when writing to them (when reading from them, they are usually not bad). So creating your bootable flash drive will run as slow as 5 MB per second, even if it is a USB 3.0 flash drive (but it will read at more the 50 MB per second, or faster). So, yes, save your money and get one of these inexpensive slow USB flash drives, because you will be writing a lot of data to it only once. When you need to boot from it, you should see acceptable speed. And make sure that you do a test boot. Do not assume that just because it appears that you successfully created the bootable USB drive that it will actually boot. Test it. Make sure it actually works. Also, it is easy to create the bootable USB flash drive. But your system might not allow you to boot from that USB flash drive, even though the flash drive is perfect in every way. Why? A lot of computers have a setting in the BIOS that locks out booting from external drives. So figure this out now, and do not wait until you actually need to boot from your flash drive. You need to know: -- Which keys to press, to get into your computer's BIOS (and once there, where to find the setting that will allow you to boot from your flash drive). -- Which keys to press, to get your computer to actually boot from the USB flash drive. @13:14 "LTS" does not stand for Long Term Service. It stands for Long Term Stable. Other versions might be available, which have frequent updates, and those updates have not been field tested for a lengthy period of time, which is why they are not deemed to be "Stable". They might be stable. But without the community using it for some time, it would be wrong to conclude that it is stable. Cheers!

One of the hidden gem of KZfaq.!! Totally underrated channel you deserve more millions. Thanks for the great content.

Thanks for the info. Haven't used HBCD since it ran a cut down version of XP, but it was extremely useful even then. Can't wait to try ventoy so I can substitute my 10 usb drives for 1. Have a great day

I used Rufus for all the boot USB drives and it works just fine.

Wish I had the Hiren's stick this morning. Could have saved me from reformatting an entire system. I've made one now

NVMe's are not considered as 'drives' in certain UEFI's, but rather as some kind of miscellaneous hardware. They even use different menus to access them, if for example you want to change their boot order. That is probably the reason why there is no option in the Recovery Driver that works for them.

A better option that I have come across is Ventoy. It will allow you to build a multi boot thumb drive and all you have to do is drop your ISO files on and boot from whichever image you want.

Ever heard of ventoy?

Hei ThioJoe! Make a sequel video to this with Ventoy. 😎

*Fun Fact:* Rufus can make all of these USB disks, even Windows. You might notice that if you visit the Microsoft Windows download page from a non-windows machine, (or just spoof your browser agent as a Linux/Macintosh with a plugin), they have they most current Windows 10 .iso _just sitting there_ that you can download: *for free.*

You can use Ventoy on a big USB drive and have all boots on it.

Reminds me of the old days with UBCD (Ultimate Boot CD). Saved many bricked computers with that disc.

Good to see the good 'ol Hiren boot cd at the very first tip, I remember fixing our neighbor's computer using my dad's hiren boot cd back in the day.

I keep a few around, though I just use Linux. 1. TAILS-OS. Even if you never use it or have no reason to use it, it's good to have around in case of SHTF 2. Kali Linux XFCE with Persistence set up. A great little portable operating system with some fun tools included, if you know what I mean. 3. Manjaro XFCE. In case I bork my systems and need a USB drive to recover it or even completely re-install (frequent data backups FTW) 4. I usually keep Linux Mint on a DVD for just in case. It was my first distro, and I still love it.

You can have all of those on a single drive with Ventoy. (EDIT: Not the recovery drive I believe) And you can still use it like a regular USB drive and store files on it.

Thank you sir. Hiren's BootCD was a revelation. And I just so happened to have an old 2 gig drive sitting around doing nothing. Perfect! :)

You can use VenToy to use multiple ISOs on one USB-Stick .

Sardu was my go-to until a few years ago; then Yumi. I'm going to have to look into Ventoy now.

Just want to give massive gratitude for inspiring me to use up 4 spare 16GB USB 2.0 drives for creating emergency boot drives, anything can and will go wrong in IT and I really appreciate having a backup plan!

I agree 100%. I have al these and some others in a small zip-box I keep on me when I have to go on the field. Hiren CD really is clutch.

Bro you're the best youtube tech channel I've ever seen

MediCat is what I use and it has SAVED me multiple times!

Grabbing a copy of Hirens. Haven't used in years. Not since computers still came with a cd rom drive.

Awesome tips thank you Joe. I use these often and have noticed that when using these PE drives you may also have to disable secure boot in the BIOS

Thanks ThioJoe you are always giving out computer knowledge and I appreciate your giving and your heart to help which is what love is .

I had a ubuntu live usb and when my father's laptop hdd died so while waiting for the new one to arrive he was able to somewhat use the laptop with it.

That is valuable information and I have to make a backup thumb drive to put my Windows 10 system on just in case my computers crash on me.

This brings me back to the days of the bootable ghost utility I used as a youngin.

Great video. Thanks for all the hard work you put into this and your other videos. Your efforts are greatly appreciated. Thanks again.

Medicat is a really nice alternative to Hiren's PC

Hiren Boot cd is One of my most used Cd's of all time for computer repair

I would also recommend taping the thumb drives together (or rubber banding) and then store them inside the pc case.!

Oahhhh YESSS ...good old HIRENS ...ended up falling asleep drunk while watching it MANY TIMES!!!

I used WindowsFX a Linux distro and I managed to recuperate most of the fles on the HDD.

Step 1: Download and install Ventoy on a 64GB+ thumb drive (Ventoy is a multiboot system so you can just use one thumb drive instead of making several) Step 2: Download and then drag and drop the ISO for Hirens onto the new Ventoy thumb drive Step 3: Repeat step 2 with Ubuntu, Fedora, Mint, Debian, and Puppy Linuxes so that you can boot one of those (depending on hardware specs) to get into a usable desktop to recover files and have the machine 'run' while you're researching issues and fixes for what's going on with the computer.

Windows To Go is always a must have. Use Rufus to apply to a drive. Have it installed on a crucial 128gb ssd just in case...

Actually, before I had bootable USB drives, I had a system image. The time I broke my laptop and had to send it in for repair, I discovered Macrium Reflect and created my first backup system image. I do probably need to get big external hard drive to store some more system backups...

As someone without an OEM PC I'd recomend an USB drive with Snappy Driver Installer Origin.

Gandalf's PE bootable drives are very useful. I still keep a copy of Window XPE for certain fixes.

i love this, i bought a 16gb flash drive thats been sitting here doing nothing, this could be very useful

I'm a big fan of using VHD's for my OS's. VHD's are normally used by Hyper-V virtual machines but you can boot your physical machine from VHD as well. What I do is create one OS image that is nicely cleaned up and then create two differencing disks. One I use for gaming, the other is for all my other software. I install everything I need on these two images, tweak them even further then create another differencing disk of both images and use those to boot from. If something messes up, I simply recreate the differencing disk from the other boot option and all is well again. It's not recommended for 'production environments' but I don't consider my home computer a production environment. ^_^ It uses a lot of space on your SSD's but it's worth it, IMO. I turn off system restore points, since I never really trust an OS installation once it became messed up anyway. Once every while, I update the main image an recreate the other images, compete with all software updates. This keeps my OS fast and stable. And you can easily test out some software and revert to a clean image if you decide not to use it. It seems like a hassle to get it to work this way, but it's not that bad. I wish Microsoft would extend their support for this method of installing Windows.

This is amazing, thank you for the cool & helpful content

Use free Ventoy usb stick. Format just once, and add as many iso files as the stick can store. No need for multiple usb sticks.

Instead of using Ventoy like others recommend, you can also partition a USB stick and slap grub on it to multiboot different ISO's/kernels/tools/Windows. You can even pack different versions of windows into it!

Another great video. I really do not know how you are continually able to come up with such great content!

I use Hirens Practically every day in the field !!!

I regret for missing this video. My main hard disc failed recently.

You should make a video where you boot on Windows PE and delete the system 32 and windows folder and see what happens. Thought that would be cool. :)

Rather having multiple USB Drives, you can just use Ventoy and drop the all ISO files onto the drive then you have all the tools in one place :)

0:02 Oscar Winning Acting 🤧🤯🤯

Hiren's boot disk is very handy. Especially the Sysinternals utilities and the password reset utilities are very handy. Some laptops have also internal testing tools which you can access by the boot menu.

Thanks. Very helpful. Can't believe I went 5 years on this machine without a recovery drive. Doh!

a better version of hbcd is falconfour's ultimate boot cd, it's mostly focused on changes to mini xp but it has some more features and it's pretty useful

Great video as always 👍 Love that you go all the way, with 4 options Thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀

Never play chess with a pigeon. The pigeon just knocks all of the pieces over, shits all over the board and then struts around like it won.

Good to know hirens is still out there

One of my community college classes told us how to use almost all of these. Best class ever. Thanks for the refresher video :)

I think you should've added Snappy Driver approx. 20 gigs, it has pretty much all the drivers for almost everything. I would've also mentioned Gandalf win 10 PE as a alternative to Hirens. I think Gandalf is about 5 gigs.

This video is great, and everyone can use these, but the thing is you can fix pretty much any issue with number one. It may take a little bit of extra work, but you can literally delete any virus, modify partitions and recover any boot files.

i would recommend using ONE usb drive and adding all of these tools with ventoy

This is the best video for computers I have seen in long time. Thank you! Your presentation is brilliant. Your screen shots are the best I have ever seen on KZfaq. I could actually read the screen information without any trouble the way you zoomed in. There is nothing worse than following along in a video where you can not read the screen display and see what is being typed in. Why can’t others do the same as you? Your explanation of this subject and what and why things work and don’t work was also very helpful. Forgive me for going on but this video was spot on in all areas that I had to say...T H A N K Y O U !

Just a thing to add to the video: you can't access your Windows files from your Ubuntu Live USB if your Windows drive is protected by Win10's BitLocker

@15:40 Another reason for wiping that way is for windows licensing issues. If you perform a factory reset and it was using a MOLP key or retail key it doesnt matter, it will be activated. If you perform a fresh installation of Windows 10 there is no guarantee it will allow Windows to activate. Meaning now you have to deal with activation issues. Thats the main reason us techies use it for.

When it comes to data recovery and system repair, I would say that Kali Linux is your best option for a linux distribution to do the job. It's packed with a ton of tools professionals use and it's fairly easy to use. it's like Windows PE. you might just want a GUI you can use but need more freedom than windows will ever allot.

The two biggest ones I can see that people SHOULD have is a Windows installation USB key and a WinPE or bootable environment that lets you access your Windows install and data. I also keep a bootable/live CD of some LInux distros as well (on CD).

No! The worst experience ever is when Windows says "You Need to Format the Disk before You Can Use It" on your porn drive.

By the way, thanks for going to the trouble of cataloging/indexing the various locations and tasks you present. This is precisely the kind of addition that this type of instructional video benefits from the most.

I have the windows Installation tool set up as a small partition on my main drive, so when windows fails it auto boots to recovery, quite practical

Better create just one drive with Ventoy!

bonus tip: use ventoy so you only need 1 usb

I love how at the beginning he talks about your (windows) computer not booting properly, and yet the stock footage shows a guy yelling at a mac.

i used Medicat USB when i had a job with computers. absolutely amazing tool.

I'd always have a gparted live drive, way faster than booting Ubuntu and installing gparted.

Actually, you only need 3 usb. This is because: 1. Stores windows pe/unbuntu 2. Stores compressed files 3. Usb drive to boot into individual os's.

Do you remember Lavabit mail? They were forced to give away private information by US government, but the creator chose to shut down Lavabit mail. It was a similar thing that happened with TrueCrypt encryption tool, who gave away the code to another company. iPhone's Manager also had issues with the government about encryption. On NordVPN, Express and Surfshark, you have split tunneling and PIA website says they do not have it. The three VPN I mentioned have strong encryption and most important is outside US. ExpressVPN moved to British Virgin Islands. NordVPN has double VPN and Tor over VPN and a separate DNS server you can use. I have used NordVPN several years and in their blog they explain about security

This is now 3 years old. It would be good to have an updated version.