Computers are everywhere, and unfortunately, they’re not quite as reliable as I’d like, given how integral they are to our day-to-day lives. I always carry a portable Linux installation on a flash drive because it gives me ways to troubleshoot almost any computer I encounter—even if the hard drive is completely dead.
A Linux drive can rule out hardware problems
When a piece of hardware in your PC starts failing, it can often be difficult to diagnose. A faulty power supply might only become unstable when you’re drawing a ton of power from it. RAM may only crash when it is nearly maxed out. Your GPU may work fine for desktop applications but fail when you stress it to the max playing a game.
Unfortunately, Windows error logs will often only give you some generic-sounding error that could easily be caused by a dozen different things, including driver or software errors.
Credit: Ismar Hrnjicevic / How-To Geek
That is where a Linux USB (or external SSD) helps. It can help rule out most hardware problems almost immediately.
For example, if your PC crashes while gaming, you could be experiencing a problem with Windows, a driver error, or a hardware fault related to literally any of your PC’s components. If you’ve tried updating your graphics drivers (the most common fix for a crash while gaming), booting into Linux on a USB drive and running some intensive application will immediately tell you if you have a hardware problem or a software issue.
If the Linux USB crashes too, you almost certainly have a problem with your hardware, or potentially a BIOS issue. If the Linux USB runs without issue, you can be pretty sure that you have a software problem on Windows, usually with a driver or the operating system itself. You’ve instantly cut the number of potential problems you have to explore in half—or more.
If you want, you can also include a mix of benchmarking tools and diagnostic tools to help you check the hardware on the system, too.
Firing up a Linux USB only takes about 5 minutes, which is certainly faster than manually going through the trouble of trying to isolate whether a problem is due to a driver failure or a hardware problem.
You can create recovery drives
Though it doesn’t happen often, it is possible for your operating system to become corrupted, just like any file. When that happens, most operating systems have built-in mechanisms that are designed to repair them, but it isn’t perfect. The automated Windows repair utility has failed me as often as not.
If you have a Linux USB drive handy, you don’t need to sweat this situation—you can create a recovery USB on the spot. Plug the USB drive into the PC, boot into Linux, then connect another USB drive to create a recovery drive for Windows or whichever operating system you’re using.
Out of every possible use for a portable Linux drive, this is by far and away the one I get the most mileage out of. I’ve even used it to rescue a friend’s PC on more than one occasion.
If you’ve got a large enough drive, you can even set up a single flash drive with multiple operating systems and recovery partitions using Ventoys.
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You can recover files
On more than one occasion, I’ve run into the situation where something went catastrophically wrong with the Windows installation on a boot drive that required a complete reinstall. Windows should be able to reinstall itself without harming other files on the drive, but who wants to take that risk if you’re talking about irreplaceable sentimental files, or something legally important, like tax documents?
In the past, I’ve booted into my portable Linux install on my flash drive, accessed the Windows drive, and made copies of the important files before proceeding with the Windows reinstall. That way I can be confident I’m not going to lose anything vital if something goes wrong.
Additionally, this will even work with drives that use BitLocker or Device Encryption as long as you have the encryption key handy. You just need a program like Dislocker, which lets you use the encryption key to decrypt the drive without actually booting into Windows.
It is a backup if your storage drive dies
SSDs are pretty reliable—my oldest drive now has more than 62,000 hours on it. However, they do fail. If that happens, you may not be able to immediately replace it. Maybe you just want something specific and it isn’t available at the nearest brick and mortar store. Maybe you can’t get one at all locally, and you have to wait for one to arrive via snail mail.
Whatever the case, a portable Linux installation on a flash drive can be used in place of a normal storage drive in your PC. It’ll probably be a bit slower, but it means you can browse the web, use basic applications, and do most office work. In a pinch, it can be immensely helpful, and it only costs $30 to buy and another 15 minutes to configure.
Credit: Jason Fitzpatrick / How-To Geek
Which Linux distro should you use for a troubleshooting USB drive?
You can use any distro you want for a troubleshooting drive. I keep Kubuntu on my drive because I’m partial to the Plasma desktop environment and like the KDE apps that come preinstalled.
In some cases, you’ll find Kali, a distro most famously used for penetration testing, recommended for a troubleshooting USB. I’d stick to distros that are designed to be used as daily drivers instead.
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A standard flash drive is fantastic for this because they’re small enough to fit on a keychain and some of them can reach speeds up to 1 gigabit per second. However, if you’re going to be using it day in and day out, I’d recommend building an external NVMe SSD instead, despite the fact that they’re bulkier. Not only are portable SSDs faster than flash drives, they’re less likely to fail if you use them for an extended period of time.
9/10
Capacity
256GB, 512GB, 1TB, 2TB
Speed
1000MB/s read, 800MB/s write
Connection
USB-C/A
