This article is for people whose Macs came preinstalled with Mavericks. If you can download the Mavericks installer from the Mac App Store, you should instead use our standard instructions for ...

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 ...

I have a simple .iso for an operating system. For this discussion, it should matter which operating system it is. It should otherwise work if burned to a DVD, but I want to use a flash drive, so it ...

There are some situations where you'll wish you had one.

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 ...

Have a USB boot drive handy should you ever need to reinstall Windows 10 on your PC. You can troubleshoot an old PC at your home. In addition to common issues to look for, there's another task you ...

To improve system security your M1 Mac won't boot if the internal solid state drive (SSD) completely dies. While there's been very little information released by Apple on their SSD architecture -- I'm ...

I've been working with and building computers for years. Somehow, though, I've managed to never need to make a USB stick (ever), and apparently now that I need to, it's something I'm not good at. The ...

The ability to boot from an external FireWire hard drive is invaluable, allowing the use of full system clones (as can be created by SuperDuper! and other utilities) in the event of a drive failure, ...

Bombich Software recently updated Carbon Copy Cloner to version 6, and its founder, Mike Bombich, posted a blog entry explaining some of the intricacies involved with updating cloning software for Big ...

Is it time to upgrade to macOS 11 Big Sur? I’ll write more about that soon. However, there is one general concern that has caused us to hesitate to recommend upgrading. That’s the complexity of ...