How to Create Bootable Partition from ISO in Windows 10/8/7?

Need to create a bootable partition from ISO? This article will teach you how to easily boot your Windows from ISO file in Windows 10/8/7.

By Dylan / Last Updated May 28, 2020

Scenario

Case one : “Hi, I want create a bootable partition from ISO for Windows 10, because I need to Windows 10 on other computer. Not DUAL-SYSTWM, I don’t want to install system. Anyone knows how to do that?”

-Question from Tenforums.com

Case two : “I have a valid Microsoft license for Windows 7 Home Premium for my computer. And I want to upgrade to Windows 8, someone tell me I can download Windows 8 ISO file and burn it to HDD to boot computer and install Windows 8. But I don’t know the detailed steps and I stuck at burning ISO file.»

«Any ideas what I can do?”

-Question from Microsoft.com

Nowadays, more and more people want to create a bootable hard drive from ISO to satisfy their different demands. Here, according to the two scenarios, we are going to teach you how to use a USB to create bootable partition from ISO for portable OS and make a bootable partition for installation in Windows 10/8/7.

How to create a bootable(USB) partition from ISO in Windows 10/8/7?

Making a hard drive bootable allows you to boot other computers from your familiar system. Here, we recommend a tool called AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional , whose “Windows To Go Creator” can make a Windows system USB like Windows 10/8/7, Windows XP, Windows Vista. In this way, wherever you go, you can use windows system on any computer.

Plugin a USB drive, and you can download the Demo version and follow this tutorial to see how to create a bootable partition (USB) from ISO with AOMEI Partition Assistant.

Preparations

A working computer with AOMEI Partition Assistant installed.

A USB or other external devices like HDD/SDD with at least 13GB (the larger, the better).

Back up your USB drive if there are important data on it, as it will be formatted.

Step 1. Install and open AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. In the main interface, click “All Tools” > “Windows To Go Creator” in the left panel.

Step 2. In this window, we choose “Create Windows ToGo with system disc/ISO”, if you don’t have ISO file, you can also create it with the current system, and click “Next”.

Step 3. In this window, AOMEI Partition Assistant will detect your USB drive automatically, if it doesn’t press “Refresh”. And select the ISO file, and click “OK”.

Step 4. It will pop up a window prompt that this operation will erase all data on the USB, ensure you have backed up important data, and click “Yes”.

Step 6. Press “Proceed” to start creating bootable partition from ISO with a USB drive.

AOMEI Partition Assistant is a powerful computer and disk management tool. If you encounter a boot issue, you can also create Windows PE bootable USB or CD to repair your computer. Besides, it can help you to clone system to SSD , resize/create/shrink system drive, etc.

How to create bootable (USB) partition from ISO for Windows installation?

If you want to install Windows system on other computers, but you don’t have an installation CD, then you can follow this tutorial and use a USB or HDD/SSD to create a bootable partition from ISO to install system.

To create a bootable partition from ISO for installation in Windows 10/8/7, firstly, you need to make hard drive or USB flash drive bootable. Secondly, you need to burn ISO file to the bootable USB or HDD/SSD.

Step 1. Press “Win + R” to open Run box, and input “cmd” in it and hit Enter to open Command Prompt.

Step 2. Type “disk part” and press Enter to open the Diskpart tool. Then execute the following commands one by one:

list disk

select disk n (n is the number of your external storage device)

clean

create partition primary

select partition 1

format fs=ntfs quick (if you want to create UEFI bootable USB, type “format fs=fat32 quick”)

active

Step 3. Then the partition of your USB is bootable, type “exit” and press Enter to close Diskpart. Use the following Commands and burn ISO to your USB drive

xcopy A:\*.* B: /s/e/f (replace A with the ISO file drive letter, and replace B with your USB drive letter)

D:\Boot\Bootsect /NT60 B: /force /mbr (B means the drive of your USB)

These two commands will copy ISO file to USB drive and write a bootloader to it.

Conclusion

This is how to create bootable partition from ISO in Windows 10/8/7. You are supposed to choose a method according to your need, the first method is to create a bootable USB to have a portable system, and the other one is to have a bootable USB for installing system on computer.

UEFI/GPT-based hard drive partitions

Create custom partition layouts for your hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), and other drives when deploying Windows to Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)–based devices.

If you use a custom partition layout on WindowsВ 10 for desktop editions (Home, Pro, Enterprise, and Education), update the push-button recovery script so the recovery tools can recreate the custom partition layout when needed.

Partition Requirements

When you deploy Windows to a UEFI-based device, you must format the hard drive that includes the Windows partition by using a GUID partition table (GPT) file system. Additional drives may use either the GPT or the master boot record (MBR) file format.

A GPT drive may have up to 128 partitions.

Each partition can have a maximum of 18 exabytes (

18.8 million terabytes) of space.

System partition

The device must contain a system partition. On GPT drives, this is known as the EFI System Partition, or the ESP. This partition is usually stored on the primary hard drive. The device boots to this partition.

The minimum size of this partition is 100 MB, and must be formatted using the FAT32 file format.

This partition is managed by the operating system, and should not contain any other files, including Windows RE tools.

For Advanced Format 4K Native drives (4-KB-per-sector) drives, the minimum size is 260 MB, due to a limitation of the FAT32 file format. The minimum partition size of FAT32 drives is calculated as sector size (4KB) x 65527 = 256 MB.

Advanced Format 512e drives are not affected by this limitation, because their emulated sector size is 512 bytes. 512 bytes x 65527 = 32 MB, which is less than the 100 MB minimum size for this partition.

Microsoft reserved partition (MSR)

In WindowsВ 10, the size of the MSR is 16 MB.

Add an MSR to each GPT drive to help with partition management. The MSR is a reserved partition that does not receive a partition ID. It cannot store user data.

Other utility partitions

Any other utility partitions not managed by Windows must be located before the Windows, data, and recovery image partitions. This allows end users to perform actions such as resizing the Windows partition without affecting system utilities.

Protect end users from accidentally modifying utility partitions by identifying them using a GPT attribute. This prevents these partitions from appearing in File Explorer.

To set partitions as utility partitions

• When you’re deploying Windows by using DiskPart, use the attributes volume set GPT_ATTRIBUTE_PLATFORM_REQUIRED command after you create the partition to identify the partition as a utility partition. For more information, see the MSDN topic: PARTITION_INFORMATION_GPT structure.

To verify that system and utility partitions exist

1. Click Start, right-click This PC, and then click Manage. The Computer Management window opens.
2. Click Disk Management. The list of available drives and partitions appears.
3. In the list of drives and partitions, confirm that the system and utility partitions are present and are not assigned a drive letter.

Windows partition

• The partition must have at least 20 gigabytes (GB) of drive space for 64-bit versions, or 16 GB for 32-bit versions.
• The Windows partition must be formatted using the NTFS file format.
• The Windows partition must have 16 GB of free space after the user has completed the Out Of Box Experience (OOBE) and Automatic Maintenance has completed.

Recovery tools partition

This partition must be at least 300 MB.

The Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) tools require additional free space:

• A minimum of 52 MB is required but 250 MB is recommended, to accomodate future updates, especially with custom partition layouts.

When calculating free space, note:

• The recovery image, winre.wim, is typically between 250-300MB, depending on what drivers, languages, and customizations you add.
• The file system itself can take up additional space. For example, NTFS may reserve 5-15MB or more on a 750MB partition.

This partition must use the Type ID: DE94BBA4-06D1-4D40-A16A-BFD50179D6AC.

The recovery tools should be in a separate partition than the Windows partition to support automatic failover and to support booting partitions encrypted with WindowsВ BitLocker Drive Encryption.

We recommend that you place this partition immediately after the Windows partition. This allows Windows to modify and recreate the partition later if future updates require a larger recovery image.

Data partitions

The recommended partition layout for WindowsВ 10 does not include data partitions. However, if data partitions are required, they should be placed after the Windows RE partition. This allows future updates to Windows RE to grow the Windows RE partition by shrinking the Windows partition.

This layout makes it more difficult for end users to remove the data partition and merge the space with the Windows partition. To do so, the Windows RE partition must be moved to the end of the unused space reclaimed from the data partition, so that the Windows partition can be extended.

WindowsВ 10 does not include functionality or utility to facilitate this process. However, manufacturers can develop and provide such a utility if PCs are shipped with data partitions.

Partition layout

The default partition layout for UEFI-based PCs is: a system partition, an MSR, a Windows partition, and a recovery tools partition.

This layout lets you use WindowsВ BitLocker Drive Encryption through both Windows and through the Windows Recovery Environment.

Sample files: configure drive partitions by using WindowsВ PE and DiskPart scripts

For image-based deployment, boot the PC to Windows PE, and then use the DiskPart tool to create the partition structures on your destination PCs.

In these DiskPart examples, the partitions are assigned the letters: System=S, Windows=W, and Recovery=R. The MSR partition does not receive a drive letter.

Change the Windows drive letter to a letter that’s near the end of the alphabet, such as W, to avoid drive letter conflicts. Do not use X, because this drive letter is reserved for Windows PE. After the device reboots, the Windows partition is assigned the letter C, and the other partitions don’t receive drive letters.

If you reboot, WindowsВ PE reassigns disk letters alphabetically, starting with the letter C, without regard to the configuration in Windows Setup. This configuration can change based on the presence of different drives, such as USB flash drives.

The following steps describe how to partition your hard drives and prepare to apply images. You can use the code in the sections that follow to complete these steps.

To partition hard drives and prepare to apply images

Copy and save the CreatePartitions-UEFI.txt file to a USB flash drive.

Use WindowsВ PE to boot the destination PC.

Clean and partition the drive. In this example, F is the letter of the USB flash drive.

1. If you use a custom partition layout on WindowsВ 10 for desktop editions, update the push-button recovery script so the recovery tools can recreate the custom partition layout when needed.

To avoid bare metal recovery boot issues due to partition size, manufacturers should allow the bare metal recovery feature’s auto generation script to create the partition used for the recovery WIM. If manufacturer’s want to use a custom DISKPART script to create partitions, the recommended minimum partition size is 990MB with a minimum of 250MB of free space.

Next steps

Use a deployment script to apply the Windows images on the newly created partitions. For more information, see Capture and Apply Windows, System, and Recovery Partitions.

How to Make Partition Bootable in Windows 7 Effortlessly?

To start a system normally, you should first make the relevant partition bootable. This article provides three methods to make partition bootable in Windows 7.

By AOMEI / Last Updated February 27, 2020

Need to make partition bootable in Windows 7

Boot partition, also known as boot volume, is the disk partition that contains the boot loader and necessary files for the Windows operating system. It is the prerequisite to start a computer normally. A suitable boot partition does not only need to contain the related bootable data, it also needs to be marked as an active partition.

For each OS you install, you’ll have boot partitions for each. If you have multiple systems in one disk and you only want to load the appropriate operating system, then you can make the related partition bootable by setting the partition active. But meanwhile, other partitions cannot be set as an active partition because one disk can only has one active partition.

Besides, set active partition is often used when your computer fails to boot. If your computer can’t boot, you should first check if the boot partition is set as active. If not set, you must mark this partition as active to make partition bootable in Windows 7.

Solutions to make bootable partition in Windows 7

How to create boot partition in Windows 7? Here, three efficient methods are listed. Within your own circumstances, choose a solution that will be satisfying for you.

Solution 1. Use Diskpart to create boot partition

Step 1. Press Windows logo key + R to open Run box. Then type diskpart and click OK.

Step 2. Type the commands below into the Command Prompt one at a time and press Enter after each command.

list disk

select disk n (replacing n with the number assigned to the relevant drive)

list partition

select partition n (replacing n with number of the partition you want to set as active)

active

Step 3. Your partition is now active. Type exit, press Enter and then restart your computer.

Solution 2. Use Disk Management to set partition bootable

Step 1. Press Windows logo key + R to open Run box. Type diskmgmt.msc and then click OK.

Step 2. Right click the partition you want to set as active. Then choose Mark Partition as Active.

Step 3. Wait for the process to finish and then restart your computer.

Although the two methods noted above can make partition bootable in Windows 7, you must be very careful when using them, as data loss will occur if you make a mistake in the process. Moreover, you aren’t allowed to return to the previous step in the use process. For your data security, the third method is highly recommended.

Solution 3. Use the best partition manager to set partition active

Things get easier and safer when you use AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. This is a comprehensive partition manager that enables you to make partition bootable in Windows 7/8/8.1/10/Vista/XP effortlessly.

It has a feature called Set Active Partition that allows you to mark a partition as active in 3 easy steps. Cancelling the current operations is also very simple to operate. By using this utility, you also can fix mark partition as active greyed out. Now, let’s look at the detailed steps.

Step 1. Right click the primary partition you want to set as active. Click Advanced and Set Active Partition subsequently.

Step 2. Click OK to continue.

Step 3. Confirm your operations and then click Apply and Proceed.

Tips:

Only a primary partition can be marked as active. Other partitions can’t be set as active. Otherwise, your computer will stop working. If there is no primary partition, you can convert logical partition to primary partition.

Make sure the partition contains the loader or boot files such as “boot.ini”, “ntldr”, “bootmgr” or “BCD” before marking it as active.

Summary

This tutorial contains three practical methods to help you make partition bootable in Windows 7. They are Diskpart, Disk Management and AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional respectively. It is suggested that you use the third method as it is easier and safer. Besides, this utility can solve various problems, such as migrating OS to SSD, converting MBR to GPT, and so on.