Need a small OS which does the following

[tsk1979]

Thanks for the tips. Both SLAX and Puppy will work for me.

One question though. Should I format my USB key as FAT32 and use this, or EXT3 like FS is better.

Whats the performance hit if I use a FAT32 filesystem as opposed to EXT3. Anybody have real world experience?

 

[Emil]

I am told there are lots of cybercafe's in Leh.

Ever wonder how come their HDDs are working? Also since I assume the HDD is supplied originally with the laptop, why don't you give DELL a call and see what they say?

 

[superczar]

Dell reps would be clueless...

And Tanveer, you answered your question yourself

If the 3.5" Desktop drives (In cybercafes) work happily in Leh, the much more rugged 2.5"ers will happily chug along

Enjoy your trip and do not get stuck up worrying about your HDD

Unless you do something silly (like throw it down in a valley), no harm will come to it

 

[shaunak]

I thought the discs were physically sealed from the environment, so I really dont understand why altitude should be a problem.
And typicaly HDDs are designed to Operate from -40c to 80c, so temperature isnt an issue either.

If you have a larger drive [say 4G] then I would recomend a persistant Fedora 10 install using this: https://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator/