Hacker needs is the hacking OS and for that Linux is one of the best choices for the hackers for a long time. Operating Systems are essential for hackers. Hacking Tools. If you have a good set of live CD, your computing life will be a lot easier in case of emergencies. I think it's good to have at-least one live USB always ready. Finally a bonus for live distro lovers, How to create a multiboot live USB with the MultiBootUSB tool. Manually create a multiboot live USB with GRUB.

• Hacker Hardware

Hacker Hardware

A boot disk (Live CD) is a removable digital data storage medium from which a computer can load and run an operating system or utility program without installing on a hard drive. Boot disk comes very handily when the system crashes. It is used for Data recovery, data purging, hardware or software troubleshooting, administrative access in case of lost passwords and Bios flashing. If you are looking for the best boot disk for your personal need, here is the best list to pick.

Hiren’s Boot CD

Hiren’s Boot CD (HBCD) is a system rescue CD contains a solution to system troubleshooting situations. It is a life saver for a variety of situations virus infections, hard drive failure, password recovery, BIOS/CMOS tools, data recovery, anti-malware utilities and partitioning. You can choose to boot from the hard drive, which will boot your computer as if you had not inserted the CD or boot from the CD to start access tools included on the CD.

Backtrack

BackTrack provides users with easy access to large collection of security-related tools ranging from port scanners to password crackers. Support for Live CD and Live USB functionality allows users to boot BackTrack directly from portable media without requiring installation. It is only for crack passwords, packet sniffing, brute force attacks and penetration testing of computers. It is not meant for data recovery.

Ubuntu

Ubuntu is most popular Linux distribution. You can try Ubuntu without installing it. When your system won’t start not even in safe mode Ubuntu is a life saver in this time. Ubuntu comes with good tools for accessing the health of your hard drive. Another good tool is Disk Usage Analyzer.Ubuntu CD comes with Gparted, which is a good drive partitioning program. The Ubuntu live CD comes with Open Office, Pidgin, Firefox, the BitTorrent client Transmission, and the open source image editor GIMP.

Knoppix

Knoppix is a Debian-based Linux distribution.It is a bootable Live system on CD or DVD, consisting collection of GNU/Linux software, automatic hardware detection, and support for many graphics cards, sound cards, SCSI and USB devices and other peripherals. It comes with 2000 built-in tools everything from disc recovery to media playback.

Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows

Ultimate Boot CD 4 is a bootable recovery CD that contains software used for repairing, restoring, or diagnosing almost any computer problem. Its User interface is same as Windows. It comes with famous built in tools like 7-Zip, Auslogics Defrag, CCleaner, FileZilla, and UltraVNC.

Also consider Puppy Linux, Network Security Toolkit, Acronis Rescue Media.