Free hard drives software for linux

FDMS-3 Ripper is a Perl program for extracting the tracks from the FDMS-3 filesystem. I recently bought a Fostex FD-8 multitrack hard disk recorder for recording music. It works great, but I was disappointed to discover that, although it uses a standard external SCSI hard disk, there was no way to "rip" the recorded tracks from the hard drive to my PC over the SCSI port. The alternatives were to use the analog-out to re-record each track using my soundcard (resulting in loss of quality and loss of synch between tracks), or buying a $500 ADAT card for my PC.

I decided that I would try to figure out a way to rip the music directly over the SCSI port. The FD-8 uses a proprietary Fostex filesystem, FDMS-3. I decided to hook it up to my PC and probed the drive. I was able to figure out the basic layout of the filesystem pretty quickly. Note: this is designed to hard disks formatted in the FDMS-3 "Mastering" mode, which stores the audio data in uncompressed format.

In order to use the program, you will need to take the hard disk that has the FDMS-3 filesystem on it and hook it up to your PC (mine is a SCSI drive -- dont know if this will work with one of the internal IDE drives you can hook up to the FD-8). Make sure that Linux can see the drive (dont try to mount it, though!). You might want to have a look at SCSI-2.4-HOWTO to get the drive recognized. My external hard disk is located at "/dev/sda", but yours could end up elsewhere.

Next, you need to make sure you have the following on your system: perl, sox and fileutils (for the "dd" utility). Security Warning Unfortunately, this program presents significant security issues, so be careful with it. The script needs to be able to access the hard disk directly, so you can either run it as root (not safe), or change the permissons for the hard disk device (in my case, "/dev/sda"). Run the program with "./fdms3rip /dev/sda" (substituting the actual location of your hard disk).

This will list all of the programs present on the hard disk. Then, run it again with the number of the program you want to fetch off the hard disk: "./fdms3rip /dev/sda 5" to get all of the recorded tracks for program number 5. After waiting a bit, you should now have a bunch of WAV files on your Linux machine. Warning This program will create and erase files with the names "dir" and "header" in the directory it is run from. It would be best to run this program from a clean directory, just to make sure there are no problems.

Parted Magic is a ~30mb LiveCD/USB with its only purpose being partitioning hard drives. Although GParted and Parted are the main programs, the CD/USB also offers programs like partimage, testdisk, fdisk, sfdisk, dd, etc...
Parted Magic is based on my work from the GParted LiveCD project and falls under the terms of the GPL.
Enhancements:
- We added dd_rhelp, sdparm, mbr, and xfburn for starters. Updated programs: linux-2.6.22, e2fsprogs-1.40.2, ntfs-3g-1.710, dd_rescue-1.13, ddrescue-1.5, leafpad-0.8.11, file-4.21, testdisk-6.7, mdadm-2.6.1, pciutils-2.2.5, syslinux-3.51, isomaster-1.0, hdparm-7.4, xfsprogs_2.8.21-1, busybox-1.5.1, and usbutils-0.72. All menus are bypassed now. After the syslinux menu, it boots to the desktop without any other interruptions. You can now create the LiveUSB from the LiveCD by using our new USB Operations program...

Phantomix is a Knoppix based Operating System running on a CD drive without using the hard drive.
Phantomix Live CD is configured to use the Tor and Privoxy software for anonymous internet communication.
Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications for your safety and security.
Known Issues:
- compared to direct internet connection, browsing is slow
- due to ad and junk filtering some sites may not work as expected (googlemail, ezboard)
- sometimes pages have to be reloaded very often until they are displayed correctly.

NetMAX Desktop is a live-CD distribution of Linux upon which NetMAX Server products are based. It includes best of breed applications: Secure Linux (kernel 2.6.11.5), OpenOffice.org, Blender, GAIM, Gnome 2.8, Dia, gtkam, Azureus bittorrent client, Firefox 1.0, Thunderbird 1.0, Totem multimedia player, XINE multimedia player, Wine compatibility layer, hotplug hardware detection and OpenVPN SSL VPN.
This distribution seeks to fill the role of a fully-functional enterprise class desktop system without licensing fees. In contrast to many of the other live-CD distributions out there, it has been designed to be intuitive enough for non-computer savvy folks to use -- including integrated Windows application support.
Power users will find that this distribution puts security first, adheres to published standards, and thus behaves in the way they expect it to. Unlike previous attempts to simplify Linux for the desktop, the power and customizability that has gained the hearts of the open-source community has not been removed.
Main features:
Cutting Edge Features:
- Complete desktop functionality (network files, presentations, spreadsheet, word processors, browser, art generation, digital camera support, etc.)
- Automatic detection of disks and mountable partitions, as well as automatic mounting of USB storage devices and network (NFS) shares
- Built-in NetMAX network file systems, permissions, authentication and provisioning
- Windows application compatibility
- NetMAX Desktop can be run without permanent installation
- NetMAX Desktop can create NIST-certified disk dumps for forensic analysis
- NetMAX Desktop includes a comprehensive suite of Linux-based multi-file system format disk discovery and recovery utilities
NetMAX Desktop is built for security:
- NetMAX Desktop is based on Secure Linux, and meets or exceeds most government security requirements
- NetMAX Desktop has integrated iptables firewall capabilities and SSL-based OpenVPN
Easy to Use and Install:
- Choose to run the NetMAX Desktop direct from CD, without modifying anything on your hard drive
- Or, choose to install the NetMAX Desktop to your hard drive as your default operating system

FIRST DiskImager is an advanced, full-featured GUI disk image acquisition tool.

It was designed for forensic disk image inspection. Developed using C++ and QT. This is our 1st attempt to create an acquisition software to meet the NIST standards.

******** WARNING !!! USE THIS SOFTWARE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!! **************

Ive tested and used the software and it works for me, but there is no guarantee that it will work for you. You can very easily DESTROY DATA IRRECOVERABLY by using this software. Do not even attempt using this software unless you are VERY FAMILIAR with the process of imaging hard drives and other media. While this program is intended to make the imaging
process more convenient, it cannot THINK for you. If you mix up the source and destination targets and accidentally overwrite the original evidence, there is nothing I (or anyone else) can do for you.

DO NOT USE THIS SOFTWARE FOR ACTUAL PRODUCTION OR CASE WORK UNTIL YOU HAVE THOUROUGHLY TESTED IT AND HAVE SATISFIED YOURSELF THAT IT DOES WHAT YOU WANT IT TO DO. I WILL NOT BE RESPONSIBLE FOR UNEXPECTED RESULTS OBTAINED FROM THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE WHETHER THEY ARE THE RESULT OF PROGRAM BUGS, USER ERROR, HARDWARE FAILURES, OR ACTS OF GOD. AGAIN, IF YOU USE THIS SOFTWARE YOU DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK AND ASSUME ALL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE RESULTS.
***************************************************************************

Harvs Hamshack Hack is a remaster of the KNOPPIX distro for Amateur Radio Operators (Hams).

This project is directed primarily at Amateur Radio enthusiasts (Hams) who have no prior experience with LINUX. Hopefully, experienced LINUX users (perhaps, even a "guru" or two) will give it a spin and offer corrections and suggestions for improvement ... in fact, they are obligated to do so!

The CD contains a complete LINUX-Knoppix operating system and enough software to accomplish the usual tasks we all perform daily from our homes ... web browsing, email, letter writing, etc.

In addition, there is a huge library of programs for our Amateur Radio hobby.

The Hamshack Hack is a "Live CD". As a "Live CD" system, no installation to your machines hard drive is necessary. The whole package will run off the CD by building a "ram disk" in your machines memory. As soon as you re-boot your machine, the LINUX system vaporizes and youll be back with whatever system is installed on your hard drive.

To obtain your very own copy of the "the Hack", you must download the "hamshack.iso" image file and then, using your favorite CD burner (I use K3B on Linux, or Nero on Windows), burn the image to a CD. Pick the "Burn CD Image" option, else youll end up with just another copy of the .iso file. Then, when the smoke clears, youll boot your machine with this new CD.

linHDD is a hard drive utility. Frontend to several functions of basic Linux drive utilities: hdparm, cfdisk, df, and mkfs.

Nice to add a second drive from the GUI. Or use it to display free space, extended drive information and test read-speed. A convenience app, it can save a user time, avoid problems from typos and presents a friendly interface to newcomers and those who would rather not memorize console-based commands.

The initial release only deals with ide hard drives, no scsi/sata -- only because I dont have the board/drive(s) to test them with. Should be a simple matter of adding cat /proc/scsi/scsi stuff. But if I cant test it then I cannot, in good conscious, write it.

linHDD acts as a fontend for some basic Linux tools, which should all be on your machine already. hdparm gives the detailed drive information shown in the large textbox. Also enables testing the HDD read speed in MB/s. df, (which lists mounted devices), mkfs and its relatives for formatting (supporting ext2, ext3, reiserfs, xfs, jfs -- if they are supported on your machine.) And cfdisk pops up if you choose to partition a drive.

For safety and sanity I designed linHDD so that it will not allow any partitioning on a mounted Hard Drive. Nor will it allow formatting on a mounted partition. And lastly, ANY partitioning or formatting must be done as root. Below is a shot of the response when trying to partition a drive when one of its partitions was already mounted.

You can run linHDD as user (as opposed to root) and check out your drive space, all the detailed drive information in the textbox and even run the speed tests. You simply wont be able to format or partition.