I've done a ton of "boot a rescue disk" because I'm usually too lazy to pull the disk. Particularly with oddball hardware, it always feels like I'm struggling with drivers or missing tools. When I do pull the disk and plug it into my daily driver machine it feels like stuff goes much more quickly because I've got all the tools I'm used to.

It's all counterfactuals anyway-- nothing like target disk mode will ever happen on the PC platform.

Apple solutions is better.

If you have another machine at hand and the wire. A pendrive fits in a wallet and works even in the middle of nowhere. Both solutions have their pro and cons.