How can I tell if a drive can be used to boot from? For ages I couldn't work out why my P133 machine wouldn't boot of CDs even when the option was checked in the BIOS. Then I realised it was the drive ...

In last month's column, I described the hurdles that Mac OS X puts in your way when you try to create a bootable disc, especially a custom bootable CD, DVD or flash drive. I offered various solutions ...

Apple only sells OS X Mountain Lion as a digital download in the Mac App Store. The installer weighs in at a hefty 4.05GB, but the good news is that you can install your copy of Mountain Lion on all ...

I recently bought a new 1 TB NVMe SSD (970 Evo Plus) to upgrade from my current 256 GB M.2 SATA SSD. The current disk is LUKS encrypted using the default options were when I originally installed ...

Rufus is a free, portable utility that creates bootable USB flash drives from ISO files. As of 2026, the latest version is Rufus 4.13 — and it’s faster and more capable than ever, with built-in ...

But with the advent of the tiny, lightweight, and portable USB key drive, system builders now have a new tool. I believe the USB key drive could alter—even usurp—our old rescue and ...

We all need to start from scratch sometimes and if you're building a new PC, chances are you'll need to learn how to make a bootable USB drive. This will enable you to boot your PC directly from a USB ...

When something goes wrong with your Mac, it's a boon to have a separate, external drive that you can work from — but Apple no longer makes that easy. Here's how to do it. The short answer to how you ...

Non-existent. To create a bootable optical disc (or, similarly, a bootable Zip or floppy disk) was a bit more involved, but not by much. So how does all of this compare to the situation with Mac OS X ...