boot disk

Revolutionary idea by game and OS designers: make certain drivers that have multiple settings, and then make games that will only work under different settings. Then, tell the consumer that they need to make a disk that will change the setting on the drivers. That way, 3.5 inch disk sales skyrocket, and everyone is happy.

Also a disk used in linux to boot up without a boot loader like lilo. You can use to startup a rescue disk. One of the two most useful disks you can have.

Some Linux distrobutions like Slackware still require the use of a rootdisk in addition to a bootdisk, but I am certainly happy to have bootdisks, how else can I randomly boot whatever OS I feel like?

Also boot disks are extremely useful when, for example, installing operating systems to empty hard drives on computers that don't support booting from CDs