This guide assumes the boot drive has been created beforehand. If you need instructions on how to make a bootable USB, Refer to this guide.

If you are testing an M.2 SSD (AHCI or NVMe), you will need an enclosure specially built for this. This is not shown in this guide as M.2 was not as prevalent when I wrote this guide.

Connect the drive internally to your PC (SATA port or secondary M.2 slot), or to a USB drive adapter.

If the hard drive is not installed and you do not have a USB adapter, it can be plugged into a motherboard.