How to Install Windows 10, 8, 7 to USB as Portable OS Device?

Installing Windows to USB drive allows you to directly run OS on other computers with this portable bootable USB flash drive.

By Dylan / Last Updated June 16, 2020

Can Windows be installed on a USB drive?

«I can use a USB flash to install Windows on my computer from ISO. But I’m often on a business trip, so I’m wondering if I can install Windows 10 to a USB, and wherever I go, I can directly run my customized operating system from the USB drive.»

— Question from Microsoft.com

When you work from home or on a business trip, you may want to run a different Windows system like Windows 10, 8, 7 from a bootable Windows USB. Actually, it is not a difficult operation. And in this post, we are going to give you a tutorial of making a portable system by installing Windows to USB drive.

Content table:

How to install Windows 10/8/7 onto USB?

To install Windows to a USB, you can use a feature called “Windows To Go Creator”, which is provided by AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional . It allows you to deploy a Windows environment on a USB drive so that you can use your own system wherever you go on any other PC.

Besides, This tool can create Windows USB with either ISO files or the current system. And it also supports creating a Windows OS bootable USB on Mac. And you can download the demo version to see how it works.

Before the operation, you need to know (and you need to do):

An ISO file/disc: You can insert an installation Disc, or download ISO file from Microsoft website. Also, you can install the current system to USB,

A 2.0/3.0 USB flash drive: Taking running speed into consideration, we recommend 3.0 USB drive, which can take much less time than 2.0 USB and port.

Backup the files on USB : The USB drive will be formatted before it is created to be a “Windows To Go” device.

в—Џ Install Windows to USB with ISO file

Step 1. Install and open AOMEI Partition Assistant. In the main interface, click “All Tools” and select “Windows To Go Creator”.

Step 2. In this window, choose “Create Window To Go for personal computer” and click “Next”.

вњЌNote : If you are using a Mac computer, you can choose the second option to run windows from USB on Mac.

Step 3. Then select “Create Windows ToGo with system disc/ISO” and choose the ISO file, and click “Next”.

Step 4. Then the USB drive will be detected automatically by the program, if it doesn’t, you can click fresh, and click “Browse” to choose the ISO file. And click “Proceed”.

Step 5. It will pop up a small window to tell you the files on the USB drive will be erased. Please back up the USB beforehand.

в—Џ Install Windows to USB with the current system

Step 1 and step 2 are the same, just open “Windows To Go Creator” in the main interface, and select Creating Windows To Go with PC.

Step 3. Choose “Create Windows To Go with the current system, and you will see the elaborate information of current OS on the computer, and click “Next”.

Step 4. Then the program will detect your USB drive. Reinsert it if it can’t be detected. Besides, you can click “Advanced” to decide the type of the created system and startup mode. Then click “Proceed”.

When the operation gets finished, Windows will be stalled on the USB. And you can insert it boot other computers.

How to Boot a PC from the portable Windows USB

Now, you can connect the USB to any other PC, and enter BIOS setup to set it as the boot drive. Then follow the steps below.

Step 1. With the USB inserted, turn on the computer.

Step 2. When the initial startup screen appears, tap the BIOS key (F2, F3, F4, F7, F8, it depends on the manufacturer that created the BIOS).

Step 3. And the BIOS setup will be launched. And use the arrow keys to choose «Boot» tab.

Step 4. And choose «Change boot order», and move the USB to the first one on the boot sequence.

Step 5. Save the change and exit, and the PC will be started from the USB.

Further reading: how to install Windows with USB drive?

If you want to create a Windows creation tool (create a bootable USB for installation) you can refer to the following content and learn how to install Windows to your computer through USB drive.

Step 1. Insert a USB drive to your computer and download Windows ISO file.

Step 2. Click “Search” icon on the left bottom, type “cmd” in the search box and hit Enter to open the Command Prompt.

Step 3. Type “diskpart” and press Enter on Command Prompt to open Disk part tool.

в—Џ list disk
в—Џ select disk n (n is the drive letter of your USB)
в—Џ clean
в—Џ create partition primary
в—Џ select partition 1
в—Џ format fs=ntfs quick.
в—Џ active

After executing these commands, your USB is bootable for installation, and you need to burn the ISO file to USB drive.

Step 4. And leave the Disk part tool, and open Command Prompt, then execute the commands as follow:

● xcopy A:\*.* B: /s/e/f”(A is the ISO image drive, and E: is the USB drive letter).
● A:\Boot\Bootsect /NT60 B: /force /mbr”.

The two commands will copy ISO files to USB drive and write a bootloader to your USB. After that, you can use this USB to boot up your PC and install Windows.

✍Attention : This way cannot directly run your own system on a computer. If you need, please use the “Windows To Go Creator” of AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

Conclusion

This is all about how to install Windows to USB. This tutorial can be applied to different Windows systems including Windows 10/8/7, Windows XP, and Vista. Besides, the versatile software-AOMEI Partition Assistant provides other functions, like migrating OS to HDD or SSD , extending system disk. And if you meet some boot issues, you can use it to create a bootable USB to repair your computer.

In addition, if your computer is running with Windows Server system, you can turn to AOMEI Partition Assistant Server Edition .

Tutorial: Create Windows Server 2016 Bootable USB from ISO to Install OS

No matter you want to create Windows Server 2016 bootable USB from ISO for OS installation, or create a portable Windows Server 2016 bootable USB drive, here you can find the step-by-step guide.

By Emily / Last Updated March 17, 2021

Need to create Server 2016 bootable USB for OS installation

When you get a Netbook or a small form-factor computer that does come with a DVD for installing Windows Server 2016, you can download the Windows Server 2016 ISO from Microsoft official website, with which to create a bootable USB Windows setup media. Then you can install a new Server on your computer via that bootable USB drive.

Compared with installation DVD or CD, the Windows Server 2016 bootable USB drive is more portable to take everywhere, so that you can perform the OS installation more conveniently.

Steps to create Windows Server 2016 bootable USB from ISO

To make Windows Server 2016 bootable USB from ISO files, the first and foremost thing is to download the ISO files. If you have done that, you can use the DiskPart.exe tool to create a bootable USB Windows Server setup media.

Before proceeding, please note:
в‘ All data on the USB drive will be wiped out during the process, so you can back up required files in advance.
в‘ЎEnsure the USB drive has sufficient disk space to hold the Windows Server 2016 installation files. Usually, 8GB is enough.

Step 1. Insert the USB device to your computer and ensure it is detected by OS successfully.

Step 2. Click «Start» button, input «cmd» in the search box, right click the program and choose «Run as Administrator» option.

Step 3. In the subsequent Command Prompt window, type «diskpart» and press «Enter» to launch the DiskPart tool. Next execute all the below commands in turn.

list disk

select disk #: # is the disk number of the target USB drive.

clean

create partition primary

select partition 1

format fs=ntfs quick

active: set the selected partition active

assign letter= r or other available letter

Importance:
To create UEFI bootable USB Server 2016, you should type “format fs=fat32 quick” to format the USB as FAT32 rather than as NTFS. But for FAT32 file system, you need to notice that you cannot copy the files over 4GB to it due to the FAT32 based partition limitation. To solve it, you can split the vim file into smaller files by running the command: “dism /Split-Image /ImageFile:h:\sources\install.wim /SWMFile:r:\sources\install.swm /FileSize:4096”.

Then type “Exit” to leave the Diskpart command environment.

Step 4. Find the Windows Server setup ISO in your computer and double click on it to mount the ISO.

Step 5. Copy the entire contents of the mounted ISO drive to your bootable USB flash drive.

Step 6. Now, back to the Command Prompt window again and run the following command “H:cd\boot\ bootsect.exe /nt60 r” to build the boot sector code in the specified partition. (H:\ is the drive letter of the mounted Windows ISO and r:\ is the destination USB drive letter)

Further reading: create portable Server 2016 bootable USB

Now you know how to create Windows Server 2016 bootable USB drive from ISO to install OS on another computer. But what if you want to create bootable USB for a portable Windows Server 2016 USB, and then you can take your own familiar OS anywhere conveniently instead of carrying a heavy laptop? Then you can refer to the following content.

Steps to create a portable Windows Server (2016) USB drive

To create Windows 10 or Windows 8 bootable USB as portable Windows, you can use «Windows To Go» feature offered by Microsoft itself. But for creating Windows Server bootable USB stick, you need to turn to a third-party tool called AOMEI Partition Assistant Server since Microsoft does not offer such a feature for Windows Server.

This software not only allows you to install Windows Server 2003, 2008 (R2), 2012 (R2), 2016, 2019 to an external hard drive as a portable Windows Server but also enables you to install Windows 10/8/7 onto a USB drive as portable Windows USB. Moreover, it supports creating Windows Server to Go with either ISO image files, or the current system.

Attention: please prepare an empty USB 2.0 or 3.0 flash drive (the latter will perform faster).

If you have Windows Server 2016 ISO image, you can take the below steps to create Windows Server bootable drive using ISO.

Step 1. Run the software and click «All Tools» and «Windows To Go Creator».

Step 2. In this window, choose the first way «Create Windows To Go for personal computer» and click «Next».

Step 3. Choose «Create Windows To Go with system disc/ISO» and select the Windows Server 2016 ISO files. Then click on «Next».

Step 3. Now, choose the right USB drive. If your USB drive does not appear, refresh it and try again.

Step 4. Click «Proceed» to start the process.

If the Windows installation files are not available, you can select the second method in Step 3 to create Windows to Go with the current system, which is much easier and more convenient. After the Server 2016 bootable USB is created, you can insert it into the target computer, restart it and change boot order in BIOS to boot computer from the destination USB drive.

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If your Windows Server cannot boot as normal due to damaged MBR, system disk errors, etc, you can also use this software to make a bootable Windows Server USB for repairing Server boot issue by rebuilding MBR, checking and fixing OS partition errors from BIOS.

Final Words

In this article, you can get all the necessary information on how to create Windows Server 2016 bootable USB for your specific purpose. As a versatile disk manager tool, AOMEI Partition Assistant Server is also able to move Windows Server to new hard drive (SSD/HDD), copy entire Server hard disk to another disk, convert system disk between MBR and GPT partition table without deleting partition/losing data, allocating free space from one partition to another and more.

To enjoy those amazing disk management functions on unlimited Servers/PCs within one company with only one license, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Unlimited.