How to Create a Bootable USB Stick on Windows 10, 8, 7?

If you need to create a bootable USB stick on Windows, you can read through this page. It explains how to create a bootable Windows USB via CMD or a piece of free software.

By Emily / Last Updated April 15, 2021

Why make a bootable USB stick on Windows?

A bootable USB drive is an external hard drive that contains the operating system and can be used to boot a computer or laptop. Most users plan to create a bootable USB drive in Windows for the following three different purposes.

в—†Repair Windows PC: the most important one should be saving the PC when it cannot boot successfully due to a virus, serious system failure, defective hard drive, or other disk errors. With the bootable USB drive, you can reboot the computer and repair it accordingly.
в—†Clean install OS: it can be used as an external installation media to clean install the operating system. This is much quicker and easier than installing OS from CD or DVD-ROM.
в—†Bring your familiar OS everywhere: the bootable USB drive can also be a portable Windows device, which you can take everywhere and enjoy the familiar OS environment on other computers, even the brand-new one without OS installed.

How to create a bootable USB on Windows 10/8/7?

As listed above, the bootable Windows USB drive can be used under different situations, so the process of creating a bootable USB stick on Windows will also differ slightly. But don’t worry, this article will outline how to make a bootable USB device for the above 3 purposes on Windows 10/8/7.

Part 1. Create bootable Windows installation USB media via CMD

First of all, we will show you how to create a bootable USB drive for installing the OS.

Tips:
в—Џ The USB drive should be at least 4GB of storage (for a 32-bit operating system) or at least 8GB (for a 64-bit system).
в—Џ Back up files you have stored on the USB drive because the drive will be formatted during this process and all files on it will be erased.

Step 1. Open Command Prompt windows: click “Start” button, input “cmd” in the Search box and press “Enter”. Right click the “Command Prompt” icon and select “Run as administrator”.

Step 2. In the pop-out Command Prompt window, type “diskpart” and press “Enter” to launch Diskpart utility. Inside the Diskpart window, input the following commands in turn and press “Enter” after each one.

list disk

select disk #

clean

create partition primary

select partition 1

format fs=ntfs quick (if you plan to create UEFI bootable USB using Diskpart, type “format fs=fat32 quick” instead to format it into FAT32 file system)

active

exit

Don’t close the Command Prompt. You can minimize it for a little bit since the process is not finished yet. Now, put the Windows DVD into your computer’s DVD drive. Open Windows File Explorer to check out the drive letter of the Windows DVD drive and the USB drive.

Then, go back to the CMD window and type in “D: CD BOOT” (replace D: with your DVD drive letter) and press Enter. Type “CD BOOT” again and press Enter. Lastly, type “BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 H: “ (replace your USB flash drive letter for H:) and press Enter.

At last, copy all the files and folders of the Windows DVD to your USB flash drive in File Explorer. Now, you can plug the bootable USB flash drive into the target computer to start installing OS.

Part 2. Create a bootable USB drive for Windows repair

If your Windows computer cannot boot due to hard drive failure, you can create a bootable USB drive as a Windows repair tool. In this case, you can use the free AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard .

Apart from creating a bootable USB stick on Windows computer for a PC emergency, it also offers related functions to repair boot issues such as rebuilding MBR, checking and fixing bad sectors on the system drive.В Now you can free download it and learn how to create a bootable USB stick on Windows 10/8/7 for Windows repair.

Step 1. Connect the USB drive to a working Windows computer, install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Click “Make Bootable Media” and hit on “Next” to proceed.

Step 2. Choose the right USB drive under “USB Boot Device” and click “Proceed”.

Step 3. Then you will be told the USB will be formatted, please back up important data. If you have done that, click “Yes”.

Step 4. Then wait for the process to be completed.

Note: the bootable USB drive contains the pre-installed AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard.

When the process is done, insert the bootable USB drive into the computer with boot issues, change boot order in Boot menu to make it boot from the bootable USB stick. Then you can rebuild MBR on the system primary hard drive.

Or you can right-click the system partition to check whether there are some bad sectors on the partition and fix them if necessary. Those two functions are most commonly used functions to repair Windows boot failures.

Part 3. Create a bootable USB drive for portable Windows device

In addition to the above two purposes of uses, some users want to create a bootable USB stick on Windows to get a portable Windows USB drive. For this task, you can upgrade to Professional. It offers the “Windows To Go Creator” feature. Much like “Windows To Go” developed by Microsoft, but it is much more powerful and flexible.

It supports both certified and non-certified USB drive. It can create any edition of Windows 10/8/7 bootable USB no matter it is Enterprise, Education, Home or Professional. Besides, it allows you to make Windows 10/8/7 portable USB drive with and without Windows ISO files. Moreover, it does not a USB drive over 32GB, instead, 13GB is enough in most cases.

Step 1. Install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro on your PC. Click “All Tools” > “Windows To Go Creator” on the left side.

Step 2. Select «Create Windows ToGo for personal computer». PS.: if you want toВ run Windows from USB on Mac, you can use the seond option.

Step 3. Choose «Create Windows ToGo with system disc/ISO» and click on «Next».

Step 4. Choose Windows ISO file in this window. Click “Next”.

Note: If you don’t have Windows ISO files, go for the second method to create Windows bootable USB with current system .

Step 5. Select USB drive and c lick on “Proceed” to start creating a bootable USB drive in Windows computer.

Final words

This article has shown how to create a bootable USB stick on Windows 10/8/7 for different usages. Be clear about your requirements and choose the right method. If you want to create a Server bootable USB drive for repairing Server computer or enjoying the customized Windows Server environment, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server.

Create a Bootable USB Flash Drive

Applies To: Windows Server 2016 Essentials, Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials, Windows Server 2012 Essentials

You can create a bootable USB flash drive to use to deploy Windows Server Essentials. The first step is to prepare the USB flash drive by using DiskPart, which is a command-line utility. For information about DiskPart, see DiskPart Command-Line Options.

To create a bootable USB flash drive for use in recovering or reinstalling Windows on a PC instead of a server, see Create a recovery drive.

For additional scenarios in which you may want to create or use a bootable USB flash drive, see the following topics:

To create a bootable USB flash drive

Insert a USB flash drive into a running computer.

Open a Command Prompt window as an administrator.

In the new command line window that opens, to determine the USB flash drive number or drive letter, at the command prompt, type list disk , and then click ENTER. The list disk command displays all the disks on the computer. Note the drive number or drive letter of the USB flash drive.

At the command prompt, type select disk , where X is the drive number or drive letter of the USB flash drive, and then click ENTER.

Type clean , and the click ENTER. This command deletes all data from the USB flash drive.

To create a new primary partition on the USB flash drive, type create partition primary , and then click ENTER.

To select the partition that you just created, type select partition 1 , and then click ENTER.

To format the partition, type format fs=ntfs quick , and then click ENTER.

If your server platform supports Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), you should format the USB flash drive as FAT32 rather than as NTFS. To format the partition as FAT32, type format fs=fat32 quick , and then click ENTER.

Type active , and then click ENTER.

Type exit , and then click ENTER.

When you finish preparing your custom image, save it to the root of the USB flash drive.

How to Prepare Bootable Install Media for Windows 10 — DVD, USB or SD Card

NOTE: These instructions reference Windows 10, but they work just as well if you want to create a bootable copy of Windows 7 or Windows 8.

Technical Level : Basic

Summary
If you performing a new installation of Windows 10, you might need to prepare bootable install media. The Media you choose to install from will depend on certain factors, such as the Boot Scheme used by your computer (BIOS, UEFI) in addition to the storage device (hard disk partitioning layout). Examples of partitioning layout include MBR (BIOS) and GPT (UEFI). In this article, we show you several ways to create a bootable copy of Windows 10 from an ISO file. An ISO file is a digital replica of a virtual disc, which users will have to make bootable on a blank DVD, USB thumb drive or SD card.
Details

Before we begin, you need to have a copy of Windows 10 ISO file. See the following article for instructions how to download a ISO image for Windows 10 using the Media Creation Tool:

NOTE: Microsoft no longer provides direct access to Windows 10 ISO images from the Microsoft Techbench website for computers running Windows 7, Windows 8.0, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. You can still download the ISO image from computers running earlier versions of Windows such as Windows XP, Windows Vista or alternative operating systems such as Linux or macOS.

After downloading the Windows 10 ISO, you need prepare it, this is especially important for Windows 7 and earlier versions of Windows.

You can use the built in Disc Image burning tool or Microsoft .iso to USB/DVD tool to create a bootable DVD or USB (requires a blank DVD) or Rufus, a third party program that can create a bootable USB flash stick (requires at least 8 GBs).

After downloading the .ISO file, right click it and click Burn disc image

Insert a blank DVD

Windows 8/8.1 users can mount the .ISO file then start the upgrade automatically. Learn more here

Important:

If you are creating a bootable USB thumb drive, make sure the thumb drive is first formatted as FAT32.

Connect the thumb drive

Right click thumbdrive

Make sure FAT32 is selected as the file system.

For UEFI based systems

If your computer is UEFI based, these are normally systems that come pre-loaded with Windows 8 or later, you will need to prepare the ISO file for such a configuration or you will receive an error message during setup. The thumb drive needs to be formatted as FAT32. If you are installing on a hard disks that is 4 TBs or more in size, you need to format the disk using the GPT partitioning scheme. Rufus ensures your copy of Windows 10 is properly prepared to support it.

After downloading Rufus, connect your thumb drive, launch Rufus application, click in the Device list box then choose your thumb drive.

Click in the list box then choose your partition scheme. If you select the ISO, Rufus will automatically select the appropriate options for you. Next, click in the File system list box, then choose FAT32. If your thumb drive is larger than 32 GBs, choose exFAT.

Leave the default Cluster size then enter a label for your thumb drive.

Click the choose disk image icon, browse to where the ISO file is located, select it then click Open.

Click Start to copy the files to the thumb drive.

If you have any files on the thumb drive, they will be deleted.

Wait while the files are copied to your thumb drive.

Close when complete

Open File Explorer, then launch setup to begin the installation.

If you are performing a clean install see instructions how to configure your BIOS or UEFI firmware:

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