Linux offers another way to use your computer. From the perspective of use in the Help Center, it can be used in troubleshooting activities. If a PC with Windows will not boot or exhibits strange behavior, it may be possible to boot Linux. Why would you do that? The ability to boot Linux from a USB device might demonstrate that the hardware (except the hard drive) of the PC is OK. If Linux will boot, from a usb thumb drive, you can use programs to interrogate the condition of the hard drive in the PC.

Having a USB device that contains Linux requires some preparation. There are multiple ways to construct a bootable thumb drive that contains Linux. Pendrivelinux.com offers methods of building a thumb drive that can boot multiple instances of Linux and other utilities from one thumb drive. Using the Yumi programs from PendriveLinux you can construct a USB stick that contains installable instances of Windows and Linux. Yumi allows for the allocation of persistent storage for a bootable instance of Linux.

This item at TecMint identifies how to build/construct an instance of Linux on a thumb drive that offers persistence. Basically it is a live Linux on a stick that functions a hard drive installation. You can do this with a thumb drive as small as 16 gigabytes.