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How to Create a Recovery USB Drive to Fix Your Computer

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Summary
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60% Informative

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.

These rescue drives are free to create and can be made in advance on your own computer.

The steps are relatively straightforward, though copying the necessary software to the drive can take as long as a couple of hours .

To boot up from a recovery USB drive, plug the drive into a spare USB port.

If you're using a newer Apple Silicon machine, turn on your Mac laptop or desktop by pressing the power button.

For older Macs running Intel chips, hold down the Option key when booting up.

You then get into the troubleshooting menu for the USB drive.

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