tales of how ubuntu linux saved the day (and windows, too!)

[raynorcsuruelos]

A co-worker asked me if I can grow the drive C of his company laptop since there's still a lot of free space on his Data drive D for all his documents and he is too lazy to create a work order ticket for the IT (plus the fact that IT would just tell him to un-install all those softwares that aren't company certified on his machine). I said yes I can, just back-up all his documents. He said all his docs were safely backed-up on his external drive so I plugged in my custom live USB stick and booted Ubuntu. Using GParted, I deleted his D partition, add another 10gb on his C partition, then created a new D partition. Done in less than 5mins! We booted back to windows and when we were about to copy the backup documents to the new drive D, found out that the backup was incomplete! Even the mail folder with his outlook pst files were not there. And the worst part, he didn't install our company's auto back-up software so all his files were not in the server. He was shocked and told me that if I can do something, he'll treat me to dinner.

I said OK, fired up my live USB stick and run TESTDISK. After about 10 mins of deeper search option, the deleted partition showed up with all his precious docs intact! Relabeled it as Primary and the new one as Deleted, Write the new partition table, and kalas! All in less than 15mis DONE. Told him to reboot in windows and then there was this strange look on his eyes when he saw all his treasured documents plus the all-important outlook inbox back in his machine again. He was amazed at how a deleted partition on a repartitioned hard disk can be recovered 100% by free and open source software! Before they were only amazed at how I can do all those crazy eye candy stuff and CUBE of course. I just said that "that's the power of Linux."

This is just one of many incidents on how Ubuntu Linux saved a friends' day (and his windows pc, too). What's yours?

[tshep03]

I carry a little swiss army knife with a 1gb usb that boots to Puppy linux. Twice now I have been able to pull files off of Windows machines that were blue screened to wide amazement and admiration. What can I say? Women want me. Men want to be me. Linux...more reliable than Enzyte!

[ragadanga63]

An American and his Filipina wife burst into my office in a heated argument. The reason: the wife formatted their digital cam's flash memory resulting to the loss of some important photos. Fortunately, she hasn't taken a shot after formatting. I just popped their flash memory into my PC which is running Linux Puppy, fired up Photorec and in 5 minutes recovered almost all of their photographs. Linux saved the day and probably their marriage.

Our town's BIR revenue officer came to me for help. Her office PC's hard drive had crashed and she had a rush job to finish. In 10 minutes, her PC was up and running, courtesy of Linux Puppy running off a 2GB USB drive. She was able to beat the deadline. It was 18 months ago, her PC is still running as good was it was on day one.

Everyday, clients come into my printshop complaining of USB drives that Windows can't open, usually because of malwares. I plug them into my Ubuntu PC, back up their data, reformat, copy their data back. Problem solved.