Are Live CDs really

[Gouki]

Guys, sorry for my question but dont flame me.

Are Live CDs realy Live?

Nothing is copied to the HD?

Can someone give me a detailed explanation of how they work?

Thanks all!

Edited September 10, 2005 by Gouki

[sonu27]

Wait for the Ubuntu next version due out soon.

Then order some CDs for FREE!

And you will find out.

[mark]

Nothing is supposed to be copied to your hard drive. When you finish using it and turn off the computer, it's all gone. I guess it just loads what is needed at the moment, pulls what you want from the disk and I guess it must clear stuff off the RAM to make the space it needs as things change. I presume you can write to the HD if you wanted to. Only used them a couple of times to see them work.

There are a number of people in here who would be very informative.

DL

[phkninja]

Live CD means no installation. The way they work is to decompress the required programs into ram and allow the linux system to call programs and files from the cd on the fly. Some Live Cd's create a small temp file on a hrad drive while running which is deleted when the system is switched off, but most do not require a HD at all.

[mark]

You can do it with windows also. BartPE

DL

[Gouki]

Thanks for the info.

Exactly what I wanted to know... It copies some files to the HD.

[mark]

I would check a little further. I have used a couple and never had anything copied to the hard drive. I understand that there are some that might use a swap file. I will check.

DL

Edit>

From Wiki:

A LiveCD is an operating system (usually containing other software as well) stored on a bootable CD-ROM or DVD-ROM that can be executed from it, without installation on a hard drive. The system returns to its previous OS when the LiveCD is ejected and the computer is rebooted. It does this by placing the files which typically would be stored on a hard drive, onto a ram disk. This however does cut down on the RAM available to applications, reducing performance somewhat.

If you are worried about it writing to your hard drive, you can always unplug the hard drive.

Edited September 10, 2005 by DL

[DigeratiPrime]

it doesnt copy anything to the hard drive, and it doesnt need to. I dont know any Linux Live CD distro that uses a hard drive. Just try putting the cd in a computer without a hard drive, you will see it only loads into RAM on the fly from the cd/dvd.

Some distros let you read/write to hard drives if you want to, this is popular as a recovery tool, but you still dont need a hard drive to use the live distro.

[prathapml]

DL has posted most of what I'd have said....

Exactly what I wanted to know... It copies some files to the HD.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

As for that, its optional. If you WANT to, then it will do it for you. Otherwise, its designed to be self-contained. Load from CD into RAM, and thats about it.

[naturekid]

Just disconnect your harddrive and check if it works...

[Aegis]

There was a XP Live CD, but I can't find the link anymore . It had something to do with XP-E...

[getwired]

There is no such thing as XP-live - any links you see discussing it are referring to WinPE (or the BartPE reengineering of it) or XP Embedded.

[prathapml]

It DOES exist!

BartPE with the XPE plugin, gives a decent interface.

And, aegis is probably referring to "MiniPE" by digiwiz. (if you got the search terms, you know to use google... )

But its warez, so no further info about it can be given.