Bootable disc image files may contain all the data necessary to create a disc from which computers can boot, but if you want them to work, you can't just burn them to a disc the way you would regular ...

Happy Mountain Lion Day! Now that you have downloaded the 4.34GB installer, you may want to install Mountain Lion on more than one of your personal machines. Do you really need to wait 45 minutes or ...

Like Lion (OS X 10.7) before it, Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8) doesn’t ship on a disc—it’s available only as an installer app downloadable from the Mac App Store ...

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 ...

You'll need to use a startup CD to boot up your computer and run diagnostics if you have a problem booting from your installed Windows XP operating system – for ...

I use DasBoot from time to time to create a bootable CD that contains various useful utilities. DasBoot works by taking an existing bootable disc and creating an image from it, adding the utilities ...

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 ...

I’ve written quite a bit about installing Lion (OS X 10.7) and about the benefits of creating a bootable installer disc or drive. While the latter process isn’t prohibitively difficult, it’s still a ...