A bootable Mac OS X thumb drive comes in handy when you need to troubleshoot OS issues for yourself, your family, or your friends. It’s also extremely useful for keeping your basic setup consistent ...

Want to try or install a Linux distribution (distro) on your computer? Making a bootable flash drive with an image of the distro is the simplest route these days. I've done it dozens of times, and ...

[Editor’s note: This article is part of our series of articles on installing and upgrading to Lion (OS X 10.7). We also have a complete guide to installing and upgrading to Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8).] ...

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 ...

PSA: for MOST use cases there is now a much easier solution. If your primary goal is just to download updates faster/not use up your limited data budget, and you have multiple Macs (otherwise why do ...

Having bootable media ready can be a real lifesaver when you need to do a clean installation of Windows. Thankfully, it's ...

Margaret T. wants to boot from a flash drive and work on documents from there. You’ll need to get an operating system onto the flash drive. You’ve got a number of ...

Creating a bootable macOS Mojave USB install drive is a great way to facilitate a clean install of macOS. This tutorial will work with the current developer beta and will also work once with the ...

If you use Windows, it is always a good idea to have a Windows 11 or Windows 10 Bootable USB around. My new Windows setup crashed, and I had no way to use Advanced Recovery. So I had two options—find ...

Mavericks (OS X 10.9) doesn’t ship on a disc. Instead, it’s available only as an installer app downloadable from the Mac App Store, and that installer doesn’t ...

It's handy to have an external, bootable macOS Ventura installer, but you practically have to fight Apple to make one. Here's what you have to do. In Apple's ideal world, you let your Mac update ...

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 ...