Amid the widespread shift to subscription-based cloud storage solutions, relying on good-old physical drives can be a reassuring sense of independence. Whether you're trying to repurpose an old hard ...

Formatting a hard drive along with the install of a new OS is the best option. The vast majority of operating system installations provide a "format" option as part of the installation process.

For those of us who rarely transfer files physically across devices, file-format capability may be a distant memory. It used to occupy a lot of attention. But it still crops up whenever you’re trying ...

OS X Mavericks is available in the Mac App Store now, but it's only an upgrade—but if you want to do a clean install, you'll need to manually burn an installation flash drive. Here's how to do it.

It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still ...

Apple only sells OS X Mountain Lion as a digital download in the Mac App Store. The installer weighs in at a hefty 4.05GB, but the good news is that you can install your copy of Mountain Lion on all ...

It was 2009 when Apple last released a new operating system on physical media. Things have proceeded remarkably smoothly since version 10.7 switched to download-only installers, but there are still ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about hardware and software YOU need to know about. This article is more than 10 years old. Time to answer a reader's ...