or USB drive that contains a bootable program that takes control of the computer. Computers are typically configured to look for the OS on a CD or DVD first and then the hard disk or SSD.

It's not as hard as it once was ... which is easy to get, and an empty USB drive you can load and boot from. Rufus is a small ...

But with the advent of the tiny, lightweight, and portable USB key drive ... of transforming the key drive into a bootable utility. While there are a couple of software installations involved ...

(1) An external storage or optical disc drive that plugs into the USB port. See portable hard drive ... hold an operating system and be used to boot the computer (see bootable disk).