Laptop hard drive died; which Linux distro for USB thumb drive boot?

[Dougmeister]

I downloaded UNetbootin, but not sure that's the best thing to start with.

If it is, which Linux distro should I install to the flash drive?

The laptop in question is a relatively new Toshiba ultrabook. It had Windows 7 on it, but due to a bad factory reset, it is probably toast. I'd like to verify that before I order a replacement drive.

The Linux distro should have some decent disk utilities.

Help?

 

[ninaholic37]

The easiest one for me to put on Flash drive in UNetbootin was Puppy Linux 4.

After I used that for a while, I tried newer Slacko Puppy 5.6 iso. It has some disk utilities under Menu->Filesystem.

I have not much experience so far with Linux but this was quick to set up and easy to use (fits on my 512MB flash drive) so I keep using it for now.

 

[jolancer]

Im not familiar with what you need beyond 'any' linux distro, in order to determine the drive as "toast".

but for reference if 'any' distro doesnt suit your needs.

PartedMagic - became very popular, but may not be free anymore IDK

Systemrescuecd - is what i use to use, PartedMagic seemed to be more popular GUI heavy fork of this but IDK never used it

knoppix - i think is what legacy users used, but idk if its been kept uptodate enough never used it

Gparted live - vanilla gparted live boots using basic debian which i think has most basic linux command function already.