For not thinking out of the box and considering loading a stripped down version of XP to only boot\recover a NTFS operating system. I guess being in the business as long as I have, I've never had the need to see if I could build a boot\XP system on a 256MB thumb drive or had the need for it when it takes just about two minutes to swap the drive into a system with a working and stable OS already installed with virus protection.
This is an example of it can be done but very impractical reasoning for doing it!