Top software to install on Live USB drive, for Windows recovery purposes

Solution 1:

testdisk/photorec. Great tools for recovering deleted files and repairing disk partitions.

Solution 2:

gparted, if it's not the part of default install.

Solution 3:

dd, for low level transfer between drives. It should already be there, so you won't need to install it, but it's good to be aware of.

Here's an example from Wikipedia to copy a partition from one drive to another:

dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/dev/sdb2 bs=4096 conv=noerror

There's a lot more you can do with this, like rewriting arbitrary blocks, creating drive images, converting files, etc.

Solution 4:

The second one is foremost a great tool to recover lost files.

Solution 5:

Disk Usage Analyzer. Handy for verifying where big files are located. It's found in the repository, if it's not part of the default install.