How to Create a Recovery USB Drive to Fix Your Computer

You know you’ve got a serious PC problem when your computer refuses to get through even the first phase of startup properly. If you can't get into Windows or macOS at all, then your troubleshooting options become a lot more limited. Hopefully, you won't find yourself in such a scenario very often—or at all. But if you do have problems booting up your computer as normal, a recovery USB drive can save your system and restore access to your files and apps. A recovery USB drive is a separate, portable flash drive that your computer can use instead of your main hard drive to start up from. Whatever issues you're having on your system can be bypassed, and you can get access to a variety of troubleshooting tools—or even reinstall the operating system, if needed. These rescue drives are free to create and can be made in advance on your own computer (or using someone else's computer if yours is having issues). The steps are relatively straightforward, though copying the necessary software to ... Read full article.