How to Run/Boot Windows 10 from USB Drive
PAGE CONTENT:
- Why do you need a bootable USB drive
- Notable benefits of running or booting Windows 10 from a USB drive
- The useful tool you need
- Guide to run or boot Windows 10 from the USB hard drive
Why do you need a bootable USB drive
As many users have experienced, Windows system sometimes is prone to be corrupted and then crash and stop working due to various reasons. As a result, the PC fails to boot and the hard drive data becomes inaccessible. This problem usually makes users who are urgent to work with their PC or view their important data crazy!
What if you have a Windows bootable USB drive? Congratulations! Just go to BIOS, change the boot sequence, and then you can start your PC properly from the removable disk.
There are the things you need to pay attention to:
- Use an external hard drive to create a bootable USB drive. The USB flash drive and pen drive are not able to help.
- Only the first partition of the USB flash drive or pen drive can be recognized by the Windows, while the second and subsequent partition drive letters cannot be allocated.
- For almost 99% of the Windows systems must have two partitions, the system partition, and the boot partition. If you clone Windows 10/8/7 to a USB flash drive or pen drive, only the first partition can be accessed. In this case, it cannot boot at all. So you must use an external hard drive!!
- Besides, the USB hard drive must have enough free space which is bigger than the system drive space!
Notable benefits of running or booting Windows 10 from a USB drive
Searching online, we can see that there are always some users ask for help on how to run Windows 10 from a USB hard drive as they can get so many notable benefits from the operation, for example:
- Getting their PC boot properly from the bootable USB hard drive even if Windows cannot be accessed from internal hard drive due to certain reasons.
- Install large programs on the USB hard drive so that they can to save internal disk space or use these programs on any other computers.
Are you one of such users who is seeking ways to boot Windows 10 from an external device? Read on, and you will find a step-by-step guide teaching you how to get the job done using Windows 10 USB bootable software.
The useful tool you need
Even though Microsoft offers users a Windows media creation tool that allows them to create Windows ISO image files on a USB or DVD to manage the job, it is still too difficult for "computer idiocy" to operate. Here, you need third-party backup software which can make the job easier.
First, Qiling backup software is easy to operate. All you need to do is open the software and clone the system to your external hard drive. It is easy and fast.
Second, it can create a bootable Windows 10 USB hard drive that contains not only the operating system but also some installed application or even some personal data which guarantees that you can directly work with a computer without doing extra jobs after running Windows 10 from the external device.
Download this system clone software and boot Windows 10 from the USB.
Guide to run or boot Windows 10 from the USB hard drive
Step 1. Connect the USB drive to your PC and run Qiling Backup. Click "System Clone".
The current system partition (Windows 10) and boot partition will be automatically selected.
Step 2. Select the destination disk - USB drive to clone system drive (system and boot partition) to.
(Here you can identify whether your USB drive storage space is big enough or not.)
Step 3. Click Proceed to start cloning Windows 10 to USB.
After creating the bootable USB drive, you can use it to run Windows 10 on a PC whenever you want. But remember that you should first set the USB hard drive or external devices as the first boot device in BIOS.
- Connect your bootable USB to your computer and press F2 when you start the PC.
- In the BIOS interface, choose the bootable device as your first boot device.
Then you can run Windows from your USB.
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