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How to make an external USB HDD bootable

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Thursday, July 14, 2016 1:58 PM

I have an external USB HDD that I keep with my laptop in order to create/recover backups when I travel (frequently). I'd like to know how I can make that drive bootable, which will make recovering a backup much easier.

Capt. Dinosaur

All replies (4)

Thursday, July 14, 2016 7:00 PM âś…Answered | 2 votes

Here's my suggestion:

  1. Create a partition large enough to contain all needed files to boot. For example: Windows 10 Installation Disk ISO file would take around 4GB, so make it 8GB.
  2. Format the partition with FAT32.
  3. If the USB external is a MBR disk then perform this step, else skip it to step 4 if the disk is GPT. With the USB connected, find out what disk # was assigned to it, and also note the partition # . From Admin Command, type:
    diskpart
    **select disk #  ** where disk # found from disk management
    select partition # where partition # found from disk management
    active
    exit
  4. Double click the ISO file to mount it. Look in this PC for the drive letter assigned to the mounted ISO
  5. Copy everything to the created partition above.
  6. To boot up from the USB. Either set the BIOS to boot it from the USB first or select from the Boot Menu if supported (there's 2 boot options: use UEFI if your Windows installation with GPT partition scheme, Use Legacy if Windows was installed with legacy MBR)

NOTE: This procedure will work with anything created using WinPE. Recovery disk, Windows Installation disk etc...

In the screen shot. I set up to boot it from another internal disk #3. The procedure is the same for external USB disk:

Thursday, July 14, 2016 2:45 PM

Are you referring to repair tool which in case your PC failed, you could use it to recover Windows?

If yes, then open start and search for Recover and click on Create Recovery Drive and follow steps there to create recovery drive.

Thursday, July 14, 2016 6:35 PM | 1 vote

Are you referring to repair tool which in case your PC failed, you could use it to recover Windows?

Yes and no.  I don't use Windows Backup, but Acronis True Image instead, which has a universal recovery capability, so that in a disaster I can recover to any hardware whether it's the same or different. if I need to recover, and the machine is bootable, I can get to the recovery via f11 during boot up.  If it's not bootable, then I can always use their Universal Recovery Media, but that's just another thing to carry around.  I use the USB drive both backup/recovery, data transfer(instead of a stick) and some offline storage, therefore it's always with me anyway.  Also I thought it would be handy to be able to boot to it if I need to do some maintenance to my C: drive (e.g. Chkdsk) etc.

Capt. Dinosaur

Monday, October 16, 2017 9:00 PM

NOTE: This procedure will work with anything created using WinPE. Recovery disk, Windows Installation disk etc...

Thanks a lot! I just want to make sure about something : when you say that the procedure will work with anything created using WinPE, does it mean that we need to create some bootable USB external drive via WinPE (does this actually mean via a Windows installation ISO file?), or do we need to run some other tool, how do we do this, what the freak is this? LOL...

All I want to do is to create a bootable external SSD : not a thumb drive, not a flash drive, not a recovery Flash, not an installation USB... Simply an external and bootable SSD that's between 500GB and 1 TB and that will host 2 distributions of Linux (my laptop is EFI and its internal drive hosts Windows 10 : I want an alternative OS on that external SSD, as well as a complete working environment, just in case, along a shared NTFS drive) - I'm still quite a newbie with creating Bootable external medias, and I'm looking for a CLEAR step-by-step solution. without obscure vocabulary involving names unless they're explained (which is usually not the case), nor multiple possible pathways and solutions within the same text making such text even more "obscure" and needlessly complicated - I'm not talking about your post, but in regards to most reference about this on the Web that are either incomplete, either extremely and unnecessarily long while forking in every directions (especially Ubuntu's documentations, whereas Microsoft's documentation essentially talks about creating Flash drives for their Windows Install program, not for an external and persistent bootable drive that's above 200GB). My criteria is straightforward : I want to be able to boot any BIOS legacy machine and EFI systems (part of my work), thus I guess that I'd need both type of boot systems on the drive, but how do I do this ?