From the ‘everyone should use this‘ files:
There comes a time when for whatever reason a system (Linux or Windows) won’t boot. It was during during one such emergency years ago that I discovered the System Rescue LiveLinux CD. System Rescue is a bootable Linux operating system that will show you what partitions are on a drive and enable you to ‘fix’ them.
The latest version of System Rescue version 1.1.5 is out today and it includes a few notable improvements over its predecessors. The most important in my view is support for the ext4 Linux filesystem. Version 1.1.5 includes a new Linux kernel with support for ext4 as well as including a version 0.4.2 of the GParted partitioning software that includes support for ext4.
Ext4 is not yet widely used in Linux distributions, though it will be real soon. Both Red Hat Fedora 11 and Ubuntu Jaunty now in Alpha support ext4. So what that means is if you’re running a Fedora 11 or Ubuntu Jaunty Alpha now and run into trouble, your trusty System Rescue CD will now be able to help you out.
Sure, most mainstream Linux distribution have some form of partitioning software (often GParted based) as part of their install media — but the reality is when a system fails to boot an OS (for whatever reason) I personally have never found a better tool System Rescure to try and fix the problem.
Where it also works wonders is for those of us who run multi-boot machines (Windows/Linux and/or multiple flavors of LInux). It’s always a bit of a guess when installing an OS how much space to give it, but what do you do when you need to resize? Again System Rescue to the rescue.