Having a secondary boot volume is almost a necessity for troubleshooting some problems with Macs. Here are some options for creating boot disks. Topher, an avid Mac user for the past 15 years, has ...

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 ...

At startup, the Windows XP boot loader, NTLDR, reads the information stored to the boot.ini file to determine which operating systems the computer can boot from and uses this data to create a boot ...

Back in the old days of 2010, I used to walk into my home office in the morning, hit the power button on my production system, and then head back upstairs to have breakfast. By the time I returned to ...

While I understand the utility of a USB installer, it should be mentioned that macOS Internet recovery has been around since Lion. You can choose to install latest ...

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 ...

Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac Turn any USB Drive into a Yosemite installer! There are plenty of reasons why you might need to make an OS X bootable drive. Maybe you’re updating numerous Macs in your ...

Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and ...