It's been years now since Hirens and other such bootable utilities were a revelation. Since then the use of bootable USB sticks seems to have gone in two directions (broadly speaking) - either you've got bigger, more loaded swiss-army knife type solutions, or, at least professionally, they're often shunned, and seen as potential security risks.
I've worked in environments where both of these attitudes were on full display.
Myself, I've not had to maintain a utility kit USB for a long time, but recently a junior tech came along to ask my opinion on the matter. As an enthusiast he always maintained a linux stick and loves them, but moving into a junior professional role he came up against resistance to using his own toolkit. I find that I don't have the time to keep up on latest versions of things like that and wouldn't trust anything I didn't know 100%. I find there are plenty of official tools that work well enough to get basic jobs done and a Windows reset doesn't take all that long either. So I don't bother.
I was wondering what you guys thought. Paranoia vs pragmatism?
The latest example I came across was this one - https://anhdvboot.com/en/features/
Lots of software loaded on there, and you download your own ISO's for Windows or whatever, to know you've got it from a legit source. But I tend to be wary of at least Chinese freeware (and AOIMEI and EaseUS are listed on there).
What do you reckon? And would you lean towards junior professionals having kits like that to make life easier, and learning to maintain them, or prefer to instill a wariness of this sort of thing?
Cheers!