Käynnistyslevykkeinä

Käynnistyslevykkeinä, often translated as boot disks or boot floppies, were small, removable storage devices, typically floppy disks, that contained a minimal operating system or boot loader. Their primary purpose was to initiate the computer startup process. In the early days of personal computing, hard drives were not always standard or reliable enough to hold the necessary boot files. Therefore, users would insert a käynnistyslevykkeen into the computer's floppy drive, and upon powering on, the system would read the disk and load the essential instructions to start the operating system, which might be on the same disk or on another storage medium like a hard drive.

These disks were crucial for a variety of tasks beyond just booting. They were used for installing operating systems, running diagnostic software, recovering corrupted systems, and even playing early games that didn't require a full hard drive installation. The contents of a käynnistyslevykkeen were highly specific to the computer's hardware and the desired operating system. A simple MS-DOS boot disk, for example, would contain the command interpreter (COMMAND.COM) and essential system files like IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS. As technology advanced, hard drives became more prevalent and reliable, and the need for separate boot disks diminished. The introduction of CD-ROMs and later USB drives for booting further rendered the floppy disk käynnistyslevykkeen obsolete, though the underlying concept of a bootable medium persists.