You can learn why do you need to create bootable external hard drive and 3 easy methods to achieve the goal. The stepwise tutorial will be included in each method. Please read on.
Nowadays, more and more users have the need to create bootable external hard drive. Usually, it comes for the 3 reasons below.
Users who have this need to create a bootable external hard drive are classified into two types.
Each method includes a graphical tutorial. You can choose according to your own needs. You can continue reading for detailed information.
The easiest and fastest way to make an external hard drive bootable is to use reliable software to create bootable external hard drive. AOMEI Backupper Professional is a great choice. It allows you to clone the disk containing your system to an external hard drive easily, and after cloning you can boot your computer directly from the cloned disk.
Thus, you can easily get a bootable external hard drive without a lot of complicated operations. As a professional disk cloning software, it also has the advantages below.
It is recommended that you make a disk backup for your external hard drive in advance because the cloning process will wipe the data on the target disk. Then you can follow the graphic tutorial below to create a bootable external hard drive simply. Download AOMEI Backupper Professional and install it. If you are a Windows Server user, please try AOMEI Backupper Server.
Step 1. Connect the external hard drive to your computer and make sure it can be recognized. Open AOMEI Backupper Professional and click Clone > Disk Clone.
The Professional edition supports cloning both data disks and systems disks from MBR to MBR/MBR to GPT, or GPT to GPT/GPT to MBR. If you only want to clone data disks, you can pick the complete free Standard edition.
Step 2. Choose the disk containing system as the source disk.
Step 3. Choose your external hard drive as the destination disk.
Step 4. Confirm your operations and click Start Clone to create bootable external hard drive.
Notes:
The second method is to use the Windows built-in feature Windows To Go to create bootable image of external hard drive. This feature copies all system-related files to the external hard drive to make it bootable. Thus, you can plug a USB drive into your computer and boot your computer from the external hard drive. But this method has these limitations below for the Windows version and USB drive you are using.
Requirements for Windows version.
Requirements for USB drives.
If you are using the correct version of Windows and have a certified external hard drive, you can follow the steps below to create bootable external drive. Please note that this process will format your external drive and you need to backup your important files on the external drive in advance.
Step 1. Download the related installation ISO file from Microsoft. Connect the external hard drive to your computer and make sure it can be detected.
Step 2. Type control panel in the search box at first and click Control Panel to continue.
Step 3. Find Windows To Go feature and click it to continue.
Step 4. Choose the external hard drive and click Next.
Step 5. Click Add search location to search for the ISO file.
Step 6. Select the ISO file to make the external hard drive bootable.
Step 7. Choose whether to set a BitLocker password. If you want to set a password, then enter your password, but you need to type your password to unlock the drive in the future. If not, click Skip to continue.
Step 8. Confirm all your operations and click Create.
Wait for the process to finish. When it's done, a bootable external hard drive is successfully created.
If you want to create bootable external drive in Windows 10, 8, 7 and you are also good at using the command prompt, you can choose this method to help you. But this method is more complicated than method 1 and you need to be careful not to enter the wrong commands during the process to prevent losing data or damaging system files.
Step 1. Insert the external hard drive into your computer and make sure it can be recognized. Type cmd in the search box and right-click Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator to continue.
Step 2. In the Command Prompt window, enter the following commands in sequence and press Enter to execute them respectively.
Step 3. Insert the DVD with the Windows installation files into the computer and then run CMD again.
Step 4. Burn the installation files into the external hard drive with the commands below.
If you consider this method is a little bit complicated, you can also try the software AOMEI Backupper Professional which is mentioned in method 2 to help you, its Create Bootable Media function will achieve the goal easily.
Yes, it is possible to make an external hard drive bootable. By using specialized software or built-in tools like Windows To Go, you can create a bootable external hard drive. This allows you to install and run an operating system directly from the external drive, providing portability and flexibility.
To format a hard drive and make it bootable, you need to use a disk formatting tool like Disk Management (in Windows) or Disk Utility (in macOS). First, ensure you have a backup of any important data on the drive. Then, format the drive using the appropriate file system (e.g., NTFS for Windows or APFS for macOS) and mark it as active or set the boot flag. Finally, you may need to transfer or install the necessary boot files to make the drive bootable.
Yes, Rufus is a popular tool that can create a bootable external hard drive. It supports various operating systems and allows you to create bootable USB drives or external hard drives with ease. By selecting the appropriate operating system ISO file and target external hard drive, Rufus can format the drive, copy necessary boot files, and make it bootable for installing or running an operating system.
Yes, you can install an operating system on an external hard drive. By creating a bootable external hard drive and configuring the computer's BIOS or UEFI settings to prioritize booting from external devices, you can install an OS directly on the external drive. This enables you to use the external hard drive as a portable operating system that can be connected to different computers, providing flexibility and convenience.
To create a bootable image of an external hard drive, you can use disk imaging software like Clonezilla or AOMEI Backupper. Connect the external hard drive to your computer and launch the disk imaging software. Select the option to create a disk image and choose the external hard drive as the source. Follow the prompts to select the destination drive where you want to save the image, and then initiate the imaging process. Once completed, you'll have a bootable image of your external hard drive stored on the destination drive.
This article shows you 3 ways to create bootable external hard drive. You can choose to use Windows built-in tool Window To Go to help you, but this method has some requirements for the system version and USB drive. You can also choose to create a bootable external drive using the Command Prompt if you are familiar with the command line, and be careful during the process to avoid data loss.
The easiest way is to clone the disk containing your system to an external hard drive using the reliable disk cloning software AOMEI Backupper Professional. After cloning, you can boot your computer directly from the cloned disk.
Besides, this software also offers System Clone and Partition Clone features to meet your different needs. You can download this software to discover more useful features.
Download this software now to unlock more useful features.