Sometimes the easiest if not the only way to access that data might be to boot that computer using an OS on a USB drive. It might be inconvenient if not impossible to remove that data drive and connect it to another computer.
A hard disk (HDD) or solid-state drive (SSD) in a computer without an operating system (OS), or whose OS was not working properly, might contain important data. 
Thus, sometimes I preferred to run my desktop computer’s Windows 10 installation on my laptop via a WTG USB drive, even though the laptop had its own Win10 installation mounted on a fast internal solid state drive, just because the desktop installation was more fully configured and thus more useful for my purposes. WTG offered the potential of cloning your perfect configuration to a USB drive that would run it immediately on any compatible machine.
When Windows was configured to a user’s preferences, it would be a waste of time and effort to go through the same steps all over again, to install and configure it on another computer. When using someone else’s unsecured computer (i.e., one that allows USB booting), it could be handy to be able to run your own system and its programs, configured in your own preferred way. Likewise, whenever there was a risk of computer theft, the user could cut his/her potential losses by keeping everything on a USB drive in his/her pocket, rather than on a drive inside the computer. It could be advantageous, in that sort of situation, to be able to hide or carry away the USB drive containing the OS. An example arose in the case of the Evil Maid attack (see my post on Windows 10 security), where a laptop had to be left in an office, hotel room, or other place vulnerable to a third party who wanted to install a keylogger or other spyware, or who had obtained a password and who planned to use it to retrieve sensitive data. For security purposes, it could be easier to maintain physical control over the location of a USB drive running Windows 10 (which could fit in purse or pocket) than over the location of an entire computer. This sort of device could be very useful. 
This post discusses the option of configuring a USB drive that can run Windows 10. That procedure may be simpler than a different procedure suggested by How-To Geek (Hoffman, 2015). Since I wrote this post, I have found that I mostly use the Update at the end.
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