Keeping a bootable USB of the current operating system is just a basic tier of protection. It brings a false sense of confidence that one day, when your computer cannot load the OS, you can use the ...

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 ...

Linux is great at many things, and one of the big benefits it has over Windows is how it can easily give you a usable PC ...

Swiss Army knife of utilities.

It used to be typical for every variation of Raspberry Pi to require booting from an SD or microSD card. It wasn't until the Raspberry Pi 2 Model B that the firmware received an update for booting ...

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 ...

There are a bunch of tools that let you load an operating system onto a USB flash drive, allowing you to boot from that drive and either run or install the OS. But most of those tools are only ...

Richard is the PC Hardware Lead at XDA and has been covering the technology industry for almost two decades. He's been building PCs since young, and when not creating content, you can often find him ...

In the old days, people commonly booted their computer from CDs and even floppy disks, but those days are long gone. Now, if you need to troubleshoot your PC, boot from a different version of the ...

I'm trying to find out of a USB thumbdrive (or flashdrive) can be setup to be a bootable drive. I know that a lot depends on the computer, but if the BIOS has an entry for USB Boot Device to be the ...

Making a bootable macOS Big Sur USB drive is a quick and clean way to install a fresh copy of macOS on your Mac. This hands-on tutorial is valid for both the public and developer beta versions of ...

Creating a bootable macOS Catalina USB install drive is an effective way to generate a clean installation of macOS on your Mac. This hands-on tutorial will work with both the macOS Catalina developer ...