How to Create UEFI Bootable USB Drive on Windows 10 to Boot and Repair your Computer
PAGE CONTENT:
What Can You Do with a UEFI Bootable DiskHow to Create a UEFI Bootable USB Drive in 3 Ways
How to Boot Windows 10 Computer from UEFI Bootable USB Drive
Bonus Tip: How to Repair Hard Drive and Recover Data with a WinPE Bootable Disk
What Can You Do with a UEFI Bootable Disk
A UEFI bootable USB drive can be used to complete an in-place Windows upgrade or clean install of Windows 10. It's also needed to start the system when your computer cannot be booted due to a virus attack, MBR damage, bad sectors, corrupted system files, etc. Once you can start your computer from the USB bootable drive, you can perform a disk check and repair. These are the two most important reasons to use a bootable USB disk. Other purposes include backing up systems, using portal operating systems on a foreign computer, and protecting computer data security.
But how to create a Windows 10 UEFI bootable USB drive?
We all know that there are two boot modes for computers: BIOS VS UEFI. If you have a computer with a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI), instead of the legacy Basic Input/Output System (BIOS), you should know how to create a UEFI bootable USB drive on Windows 10.
There are several different ways to make a bootable disk in UEFI mode. Let's learn together.
How to Create a UEFI Bootable USB Drive in 3 Ways
In this part, we will introduce three common ways to create a bootable USB drive by using Windows 10 Midea Creation tool, Diskpart, and third-party software - Refus.
1. Create a UEFI Bootable USB with Windows 10 Media Creation Tool
If you want to create a UEFI bootable USB media for an in-place upgrade or clean install of Windows 10, you can use the Microsoft Media Creation Tool.
To create a Windows 10 UEFI bootable USB, prepare a USB flash drive with at least 8GB of capacity. Then use these steps:
Step 1. Download Windows 10 installation media from the official website of Microsoft.
Step 2. Run the exe file of MediaCreationTool. Click "Accept" to agree to the license terms.
Step 3. On the Windows 10 Setup screen, select "Create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) for another PC". Click the "Next" button.
Step 4. Click "Next" on the language, edition, and architecture screen. Select the "USB flash drive" option, and click "Next".
Step 5. Select your connected USB flash drive from the list. And click "Next > Finish" to complete the process. Wait for the Media Creation Tool to download the files and create a bootable USB flash drive that you can use to install Windows 10 on devices with support for UEFI and BIOS.
2. Create a UEFI Bootable USB on Windows 10 with Diskpart
With the built-in Diskpart utility, you can also create a Windows 10 UEFI bootable USB drive. Note that this solution requires command-line operations, so if you're not confident, you'd better choose a simpler graphical solution.
The process of making a USB bootable drive will erase all data on it. Remember to back up important files and data in advance.
Step 1. Connect your USB flash drive to the computer.
Step 2. Type CMD in the Search box, and right-click on the Command Prompt, and select Run as Administrator.
Step 3. In Command Prompt, type Diskpart and press Enter.
Step 4. Type the following commands in order, and press Enter after each one.
list disk
select disk #
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32 (it means you format the drive with fat32 file system)
assign
exit
Step 5. Copy the Windows installation files to the USB flash drive. You can do this by simply using copy-and-paste. Then, the process of creating a bootable UEFI flash drive with Windows 10 finishes.
3. Create UEFI Bootable USB Drive with Rufus
If you have difficulty in creating Windows 10 UEFI bootable USB with Diskpart, you can use Rufus, an open-source program that allows you to create a UEFI bootable disk on Windows 10/8/7.
Step 1. Download Rufus from the official website: https://rufus.ie/en/.
Step 2. Connect your USB flash drive to the computer.
Step 3. Run this program and make the following main settings:
- Device: Select your USB flash drive.
- Boot selection: Select DISK or ISO image. And click the SELECT button to choose the Windows 10 ISO file from the folder location.
- Partition scheme: Select GPT for UEFI.
- Target system: Select UEFI (non CSM).
- File system: Select NTFS.
On other options and settings, choose based on the actual situation. Then, click the START button to let Rufus create a UEFI USB flash drive.
How to Boot Windows 10 Computer from UEFI Bootable USB Drive
You can create a UEFI bootable USB drive on Windows 10 by taking any of the methods above. After successfully creating the boot disk, you also need to know how to boot your computer from the bootable USB.
Follow the steps below to start your computer from Windows 10 UEFI bootable USB drive.
Step 1. Connect the UEFI bootable USB disk to a dead, unbootable, inaccessible Windows computer.
Step 2. Restart your computer, hold F2/F11/Del to enter BIOS.
Step 3. Go to the Boot Drive section and set the UEFI bootable USB as the boot drive.
Step 4. Save the changes and exit BIOS. Wait for your computer to boot up from the UEFI bootable USB disk.
Bonus Tip: How to Repair Hard Drive and Recover Data with a WinPE Bootable Disk
When your computer cannot start, besides using the BIOS or UEFI USB bootable drive, is there another way to access the computer to fix errors and manage hard drives? Yes, you can resort to a disk management WinPE bootable disk by using partitioning software - Qiling Partition Master.
With simple clicks, you can create an Qiling Partition Master WinPE bootable disk and run it on your computer without system boot partitions. Then, you can repair and manage your hard drives with advanced solutions, or restore data by cloning the hard drive.
Steps for creating a WinPE bootable USB drive with Qiling partitioning software.
Step 1. To create a bootable disk of Qiling Partition Master, you should prepare a storage media, like a USB drive, flash drive or a CD/DVD disc. Then, correctly connect the drive to your computer.
Step 2. Launch Qiling Partition Master, find the "WinPE Creator" feature on the top. Click on it.
Step 3. You can choose the USB or CD/DVD when the drive is available. However, if you do not have a storage device at hand, you can also save the ISO file to a local drive, and later burn it to a storage media. Once made the option, click the "Proceed" button to begin.
When the process finishes, you have successfully created an Qiling Partition Master WinPE bootable disk. Now, you can manage your hard disks and partitions through the bootable drive whenever the computer fails to boot normally.
If you have RAID drives, load the RAID driver first by clicking Add Driver from the menu bar, which can help you add the driver of your device under WinPE environment, as some specific device cannot be recognized under WinPE environment without drivers installed, such as RAID or some specific hard disk.
Once the Qiling Partition Master bootable disk has been created, you can access your computer and the disk from this USB bootable drive for subsequent disk repair and data recovery operations.
Wrapping Up
How to create a UEFI bootable USB on Windows 10? If you are still struggling with this question, you can find the answer here. You can create a UEFI bootable disk in four ways by using Windows 10 installation media, Diskpart, and Refus.
If you need to boot your computer from a USB bootable disk and manage or repair your disk in a WinPE environment, we strongly recommend you use Qiling Partition Master, which enables you to clone failing hard drive to a new HDD/SSD.
Related Articles
- Lenovo Laptop Running Slow Windows 11/10 | Speed It Up
- How to Wipe External Hard Drive on Windows 10 and Mac Without Recovery
- How to Create and Format exFAT Partitions in Windows 11/10/8/7 (Free Methods)
- 3 Methods for Converting GPT to MBR in Windows Server without Losing Data - Qiling