Detailed Steps for Booting from External Drive in Windows 10/11

Reasons of Booting from External Hard Drive in Windows 10

To boot from an external device, it must contain a bootable format, such as a Windows installation disk, Linux LiveCD, or an anti-virus diagnostic tool. If the device does not contain bootable media, the device will boot from the internal hard drive.

The reasons why users want to boot from an external drive in Windows 10 vary from person to person. The following are some common reasons.

• When Windows 10 won't boot from the internal hard drive. You need an external bootable hard drive for the boot mechanism. You can change the priority list from the BIOS.
• Failure of external media due to hard drive corruption, bad sectors, or corruption of the partition containing the BIOS.
• Hard drives containing BIOS information are attacked by viruses or malware.
• If you can't access your device, you can always use your own operating system and use external bootable media on other devices.

Before booting an external drive on Windows 10, you need to set up some necessary configurations before proceeding with the boot method.

Figure Out Your Computer’s BIOS Key on Windows

You need to figure out your computer's BIOS keys in advance on Windows. If you want to set your computer to boot from an external hard drive, you need to access the BIOS, which is a control panel. You open it by pressing a key (usually a function key, such as F12) repeatedly while your computer is booting. If you don't know it, you can usually find out which key to use by.

1. Opening a search engine (such as Google). Enter the manufacturer of your computer, the model name, and the phrase "BIOS key".
2. Press Enter and search for results that match your search and identify your BIOS key.
3. You can also check your computer's manual (if you don't have one, you can find online documentation for your computer on the manufacturer's website).

Setting Up Your External Hard Drive (Connect and Format)

In order to boot from external drive on Windows 10, you will also need to connect the external hard drive to your computer. You should make sure that the drive should not carry any additional or non-functional data that could interfere with the boot mechanism. If you have any important data that you want to keep, you can back up your external drive.

Also, if the hard drive is not compatible with the device, i.e. The file format on the drive is not compatible, your device will not be able to read it. In this regard, you can go ahead and format the drive into a compatible file system. NTFS for Windows is the preferred file system. Once the drive and the device are compatible, next you have to reformat your drive as the boot files will be stored on this external drive.

How to Make External Hard Drive Bootable

In the process of booting the external drive in Windows 10, There are some requirements. You need a disk image or ISO file to be present on the external hard drive. Only then will you be able to boot that drive. An empty drive will not boot. You can use specialized tools to make your external drive bootable.

The easiest and fastest way to make an external hard drive bootable is to use reliable software to create bootable external hard drives. AOMEI Backupper Professional is a good choice. It allows you to easily clone the disk containing your system to an external hard drive, and after cloning you can boot your computer directly from the cloned hard drive. Thus, you can easily get a bootable external hard disk without a lot of complicated operations.

It is recommended that you make a disk backup of your external hard drive in advance, as the cloning process will erase the data on the target disk. Then, you can simply create a bootable external hard drive by following the graphic tutorial below. Download AOMEI Backupper Professional and install it. If you are a Windows Server user, please try AOMEI Backupper Server.

1. Connect the external hard drive on Widnows 10 and make sure it can be recognized. Open AOMEI Backupper Professional and click Clone > Disk Clone.

2. Choose the disk containing Windows 10 system as the source disk.

3. Choose your external hard drive as the destination disk.

4. Confirm your operations and click Start Clone to make external hard drive bootable on Windows 10.

Notes:

• Edit Partitions: You can adjust partition size when your target disk is larger than the source disk. 
• SSD Alignment: If your target external hard drive is an SSD, you can tick the SSD Alignment option to make the SSD performs better.
• Sector By Sector Clone: It will clone all sectors, whether they are used or not. Even if the sector is blank or it is a logically bad sector. It requires your target disk the same as or larger than the source disk.

Booting from External Hard Drive on Windows 10/11

After you make the external drive bootable, you can refer to the following steps to boot the operating system from that external hard drive.

1. Restart your computer press the required key (F1, F2, F10, F12, Delete, etc.) to enter BIOS settings.
2. Find the boot menu and set the cloned hard drive as the first boot option among all the devices.

3. Press F10 to save the settings and exit.

Final Words

After reading this article, you know the detailed steps for booting from an external disk. It is a common practice to use the internal hard drive to boot the operating system. But sometimes, it is not possible to boot the operating system from the internal drive due to some kind of problem such as bad sectors, corrupted partitions, and physical damage to the hard drive, or the entire hard drive is damaged due to any virus or malware attack. All these situations do not allow the operating system to work and leave your device in a non-functional state. In this regard, it is recommended to use an external hard drive to boot the operating system on your device.