We’ve all had some experience with the Knoppix line of bootable Linux CDs, right? No one can really argue with how effective they can be when you need to do some data recovery. But what about when you need to take it up a level?

There are many options out there for bootable CDs. Some offer a free download that gives you a ready to go ISO file while others are going with the commercial approach instead. Each has merit, depending on what you are looking for. Today I am going to show you two of my personal favorites.

Ultimate Boot CD
Definitely a great option for both the user and the IT Pro, I think that this is a great place to start if you are not wanting to get into some of the more advanced aspects of creating and maintaining a decent bootable recovery/help CD. This turkey option comes with plenty of tools and helpful utilities. Remove viruses, check the status of hard drives, resize partitions, there is very little that this bootable wonder can’t do. I highly recommend it. Best of all, it is OS independent.

BartPE
Sometimes you simply need to do your diagnostics and repairs from within a Win32 environment. While I personally tend to use the option above more, Bart can also do some amazing things for ya. In many cases, Bart can be a better option when you are actually dealing with a true Windows problem. After all, this is basically a Windows environment, right? Not only that, but you can do your spyware removal with available plugins too. I do not believe you will have much success with the Ultimate Boot CD when it comes to spyware removal (correct me if I am wrong here).

My only real gripe with Bart is that you will have to do some slipstreaming to get it working. Just to be clear though, this is only an issue if you are using a Windows XP CD that was not bundled with SP1 or SP2. If the idea of slipstreaming does not set well with ya, then I’d suggest buying a new copy of XP and just create your Bart disk from that.

Let’s wrap this up. I think that having both is helpful as they each have their own strengths and weaknesses. To me, the must have just for virus removal would probably be the Ultimate Boot CD. Simple to create and it is just an option that has always done me up right!