USB boot or dual boot

Dual booting your laptop is it a thing of the past?

For those who have a portable computer provided by their business it is simply an impossibility.
Your IT will most likely not tolerate you concurrently installing a second operating system and thus changing the partition layout of your work PC.

If you do not want to carry 2 laptops, your personal one and your business one while on the move
If you want to store your personal data safely away from your IT department’s prying eyes
If you want to have more control of your machine – i.e. have administrator rights and be able to change some files on your local hard drive

The answer is simple: boot another operating system from a USB device, such as a flash drive or a USB hard drive.

With the advent of desktop Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, Knoppix, Fedora and others most modern (and old) laptop hardware drivers are already covered by these operating systems. In other words all devices integrated with your Dell, HP, Toshiba or IBM will be automatically identified and operational. All you need to do is obtain a live CD of one of the above distros and install it on your pen drive.

Hey!.. If Linux sounds like too much work you can even boot XP from your flash drive! There are Howto’s available, just google it.

One thing left to verify is if you can boot from a USB device on that PC of yours. Your IT department should be able to answer that question.