Ubuntu on a USB stick?

[lynnkitty]

I remember having a program that allowed a person to install a working copy of Ubuntu on a USB stick, but I can't find it.   Does anyone know what I'm talking about?  My friend gave me their computer to fix, but they are having a hard drive error, and I can't fix that.  lol  I figured I'd at least give them something so they could at least use their compy to access a web browser.  Thanks in advance for the help!

EDIT: I found the program I was looking for!  It's UNetBootin!  http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

[saph the sergal]

best thing i would recomend is whats called a low level format basically making the hard drive like new destroying everything that was on it or a new hard drive and setting that one up

[Timmy Fox]

best thing i would recomend is whats called a low level format basically making the hard drive like new destroying everything that was on it or a new hard drive and setting that one up

What are you even talking about? Lynn mentioned hard drive errors and you suggest erasing all potentially recoverable data from it?..

@Lynn, I think this is what you're looking for: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-windows

[saph the sergal]

timmy yea bad sectors low level formatting removes those by writing 0's to them ive had to do it before and it fixed it even seagate recomends it




Why would I want to Zero Fill my drive?
[/size]The most common reasons to Zero Fill a SATA or ATA (IDE) hard drive are:[/size]to remove a virus that cannot be removed without destroying the boot sector.

• to change from one operating system to another and wish to remove everything from the drive.

• to erase confidential information for privacy reasons.

• to scan for bad sectors that can be detected and replaced with good spare sectors when writing to the sectors.

• 
  http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/203931en[/font]

[Vosur Aekira]

Considering that there are OS's that are less than 20GB, I am not surprised at this. I have seen 64GB USB sticks (of which I own one personally), so I'd say it is able to be pulled off.

[Timmy Fox]

Snip

But that assumes the lower sectors are the problem. You do not know what's wrong with it and the drive may not even be functioning for all you know or it may even just something simple such as a broken file making it not wanting to boot. It doesn't matter if Seagate recommends it or not, what you're suggesting is basically the same thing as replacing a non-functional engine in a car instead of even trying to fix it. It's a very case-specific solution that should be done only once you're certain it's the solution required to fix your drive. And for the record, to maintain drive health you usually don't need to low-level format it either unless it's already so broken it's probably time to buy a new one anyway as a lot of the things it does to the drive is already done automatically as part of the regular defragmentation process (something which is done by the operating system (Win 7 and up at least) automatically in the background.

The question, either way, was about installing Ubuntu on a USB stick. Then once that's done I would suggest trying to access any of the data on the drive from there and see if anything can be saved/recovered before permanently deleting everything.

[MrRazot]

This is actually how I recover data from anything. Ubuntu seems to have a knack for reading corrupted drives. It also can be installed on something as small as a 4GB flash drive following the link timmy first sent. Ubuntu is only really about 800MB

[lynnkitty]

For what it's worth, I found the program I was looking for.     Thanks for the help, everyone!