Boot CD

[[GSV]Trig]

After a small image that can be used to grab stuff off of a laptop drive and stick it on a USB memory stick, would use knoppix usually but looking for something smaller if possible..

[ikonia]

does the size matter as anything between 1 and 700 meg will require a cd.

You could use any linux livecd or the XP install CD and I'd imagine the vista one (I know nothing about vista so I only suggest it)

[vinnyT]

You want ;

Damn Small Linux is small enough and smart enough to do the following things: Boot from a business card CD as a live linux distribution (LiveCD): Boot from a USB pen drive

It's a 50MB mini desktop oriented Linux distribution

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

[ikonia]

......doesn't it still runn the 2.4 kernel with not all hardware support

[vinnyT]

......doesn't it still runn the 2.4 kernel with not all hardware support

Yes, as far as I know it is 2.4.20, the 2.6 kernel was/is considered too big for dsl's purpose.

The op asked for a small distro that he/she could use to get files off a harddrive, I've used dsl to do this on a few occasions.

It's free so he/she can try it, if it doesn't work (because of lack of hardware support) then he/she can just try another distro, no harm/no foul.

I would be supprised if it doesn't work for the task in hand.

[[GSV]Trig]

As long as it does NTFS and USB then I can stick it on a CD and do what's needed.

[ikonia]

2.4 - not great on usb or the newer usb controllers.

you can but try

[vinnyT]

If dsl doesn't (for whatever reason) then you could try Puppy Linux, your complete, up-to-date desktop suite in 28-70 MB!

It's also a small distro that can boot from a live cd or usb drive, I've not used this, but it should do what you want.

http://www.puppylinux.org/user/viewpage.php?page_id=1