PeterBad things happen, and sometimes those bad things will happen to your computer, or a computer you are responsible for.
There are quite a few Linux live CDs out there designed for the purpose of rescue systems. The idea is, something bad happens, and you then boot into the CD and use the tools it provides to fix the problem, or hopefully at the very least save your data.
SystemRescueCD includes a whole host of tools that are very useful. If you are already a Linux whiz, you have a full command line available to you, as you'd expect, and an impressive array of tools you might need. I particularly find partimage to be useful, and use SysRecCD to do backups of my Linux system in this way. There are also lots of other system tools, including full read-write support for NTFS partitions through ntfs-3g, meaning
As well as the command line side of things, the CD also has a GUI available, which uses WindowMaker. One thing that is worth mentioning is that it isn't loaded up by default, you have to start it with startx. This is fine if you're reasonably proficient with the command line or know how to do this, but it does raise the barrier significantly for non-Linux people who want a restore system.
GUI applications included in the distribution feature Gparted, for easy reformatting and repartitioning of disks, both Firefox and Dillo for any emergency browsing needs and many other basic graphical programs.
SystemRescueCD certainly isn't for the faint of heart, and you'll need a reasonable previous amount of experience with Linux to be able to use it effectively. But as a backup and restore tool, I find it to be very useful and provide many tools you might need in a lightweight live CD environment.
It can be downloaded from the official wiki.
