Why a portable Linux install is my favorite troubleshooting tool
Computers are everywhere and unfortunately, they are not as reliable as I would like, given their importance in our daily lives. I always carry a portable Linux installation on a USB stick, because it allows me to troubleshoot almost any computer I encounter, even if the hard drive is completely dead.
A Linux drive can rule out hardware issues
When a piece of hardware on your PC starts to fail, it can often be difficult to diagnose. A faulty power supply can only become unstable when you use a ton of power from it. RAM can only crash when it is almost at maximum. Your GPU may work fine for desktop applications, but fail when you’re straining it to the max while playing a game.
Unfortunately, Windows error logs will often only give you a generic error that could easily be caused by a dozen different things, including driver or software errors.
This is where a Linux USB (or external SSD) comes in handy. This can help eliminate most hardware problems almost immediately.
For example, if your PC crashes while you’re gaming, you might encounter a problem with Windows, a driver error, or a hardware failure related to one of your PC’s components. If you’ve tried updating your graphics drivers (the most common solution to crashes while gaming), booting Linux on a USB drive and running a heavy-duty application will immediately tell you whether you have a hardware problem or a software problem.
If the Linux USB flash drive also fails, you almost certainly have a problem with your hardware, or potentially a BIOS problem. If the Linux USB flash drive works without a problem, you can be pretty sure you have a software problem in Windows, usually with a driver or the operating system itself. You’ve instantly reduced the number of potential issues you need to explore by half or more.
If you wish, you can also include a combination of benchmarking tools and diagnostic tools to help you check the system hardware as well.
Booting a Linux USB stick only takes about 5 minutes, which is certainly faster than manually trying to isolate whether a problem is due to a driver failure or hardware issue.
You can create recovery drives
Although it doesn’t happen often, it is possible that your operating system is corrupted, like any file. When this happens, most operating systems have built-in mechanisms designed to fix them, but it’s not perfect. Windows’ automated repair utility often failed me.
If you have a Linux USB drive handy, you don’t need to worry about this situation: you can create a recovery USB drive 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 whatever operating system you are using.
Of all the possible uses for a portable Linux player, this is by far the one I get the most use out of. I even used it to rescue a friend’s PC on several occasions.
If you have a large enough drive, you can even configure a single flash drive with multiple operating systems and recovery partitions using Ventoys.
How I Created the Ultimate Rescue Disk for My PCs
A pocket-sized lifesaver for your computer.
You can recover files
On several occasions I have been faced with a situation where a catastrophic problem occurred while installing Windows on a bootable drive requiring a complete reinstallation. Windows should be able to reinstall without damaging other files on the disk, but who wants to take that risk if it’s irreplaceable sentimental files, or something legally important, like tax documents?
In the past, I have booted my portable Linux installation on my flash drive, accessed the Windows drive, and made copies of important files before proceeding with the Windows reinstallation. This way I can be sure that I won’t lose anything vital if something goes wrong.
Plus, it 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 allows you to use the encryption key to decrypt the drive without starting Windows.
It’s a backup if your storage drive dies
SSDs are pretty reliable: my oldest drive now has over 62,000 hours on it. However, they fail. If this happens, you may not be able to replace it immediately. Maybe you just want something specific and it’s not available at the nearest physical store. Maybe you can’t get one at all locally and have to wait for it to arrive by snail mail.
Either way, a portable Linux installation on a flash drive can be used in place of a normal storage drive on your PC. It’ll probably be a little slower, but it means you’ll be able to browse the web, use basic apps, and do most office tasks. In a pinch, this can be extremely useful, and it only costs $30 to purchase and an additional 15 minutes to set up.
Which Linux distribution should you use to troubleshoot a USB drive?
You can use any distro you want for a recovery drive. I keep Kubuntu on my drive because I have a soft spot for the Plasma desktop environment and I like the pre-installed KDE apps.
In some cases, you’ll find Kali, a best-known distribution for penetration testing, recommended for USB troubleshooting. I’ll instead stick to distros designed to be used as daily drivers.
How to Create a Bootable Linux USB on PC or Mac
Creating a bootable USB drive allows you to get hands-on Linux experience without necessarily overwriting your system.
A standard USB drive is fantastic for this as it’s small enough to fit on a key ring and some of them can reach speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second. However, if you plan to use it daily, I recommend building an external NVMe SSD instead, despite the fact that they are larger. Not only are portable SSDs faster than flash drives, but they are also less likely to fail if you use them for an extended period of time.
9/10
- Ability
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256 GB, 512 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB
- Speed
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1000 MB/s read, 800 MB/s write
- Connection
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USB-C/A
