Bootable USB Creator: Easily Make USB Drive Bootable in Windows PC

As a reliable bootable USB creator, AOMEI Partition Assistant allows you to create a bootable Windows USB to boot any computer from a familiar OS, and make a bootable USB device to repair Windows boot issues.

Emily

By Emily / Updated on May 12, 2023

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“How do I make a USB drive bootable to run OS from it?”

Hey, guys. I have a preinstalled Windows 10 32bit computer. And I am trying to create a bootable USB drive with OS installed on. Then I can carry it around to boot my own operating system from USB on any compatible device. Could you offer an elaborate explanation of how to do it step by step? Thanks!

Choose a reliable bootable USB creator

Many Windows users are eager to make a bootable Windows USB drive and boot their customized OS from it on any computer. For this demand, Microsoft develops the “Windows To Go” feature for Windows 10 Education/Enterprise/Pro and Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise users. If you are running those operating systems, you can try it to burn ISO to USB drive and make the USB bootable.

However, this function also requires a USB that is larger than 32GB and certified by Microsoft, otherwise, you will fail to make a bootable USB from ISO. Thus, you might want to use a more powerful bootable USB making tool to make a bootable USB flexibility. Here we recommend using AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional.

Advantages over Microsoft “Windows To Go”:
Allow you to create a bootable USB drive on all editions of Windows 10/8/7 and Windows XP/Vista (32 bit and 64 bit).
Not require a certified USB drive which is over 32GB.
Support creating a bootable USB drive from ISO/system disc, as well as making a bootable Windows USB drive with the current system.

4 Steps to create a bootable USB in Windows 10/8/7

In the last section, we have mentioned that AOMEI Partition Assistant Pro provides two methods to make a bootable USB drive. Here we will take how to make a bootable USB from ISO as an example.

Preparation work:
①Prepare an empty USB drive. To speed up the process, a USB 3.0 drive and computer with a USB3.0 port are recommended.
②Download the Windows ISO files from the Microsoft official site.
③You can download the AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional Demo version first and give it a try.

Download Pro Demo Win 10/8.1/8/7/XP
Secure Download

Step 1. Plug the prepared USB drive in your Windows 10 computer and verify it is detected successfully. Run AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional. Click “Tools” in the top toolbar, and choose “Windows To Go Creator”.

Win To Go Creator

Step 2. Here we choose the first option "Create Windows ToGo for personal computer".

Create Win To Go For Personal Computer

Step 3. Choose "Create Windows ToGo with system disc/ISO" and select the prepared ISO files, then hit on "Next".

Choose Windows Files

Step 4. In the subsequent window, choose the USB you plan to use. Then click the "Proceed" option to start making a bootable USB from ISO.

 

Choose Usb Drive

If you have don’t have prepared Windows ISO files, you can choose the second method in "Step 3" to create Windows bootable USB with current system.

Create Windows To Go With Current System

Bonus info: create bootable USB for Windows repair or install

With the above bootable USB creator, you can also make a bootable USB drive for dealing with the Windows boot failure. When you cannot boot your OS as normal, you can use the "Make Bootable CD Wizard" to make a bootable USB drive on another working computer.

Make Bootable Media

Then you boot your computer with a boot failure from the bootable drive, To repair the startup problems, you can try to rebuild MBR on the system drive, or check bad sectors on the main hard drive.

Rebuild System Disk Mbr

If you need to install Windows and you don’t have access to an installation CD/DVD drive, a bootable USB drive is a great solution. You can boot to the USB drive, using it to run the OS setup program, just like a CD or DVD. For this task, you need another different bootable USB creator- Windows USB/DVD Download Tool.

Step 1. Download, install and run Windows USB/DVD Download Tool.

Step 2. In the “Source file” box, click “Browse” and select the file from the OPEN dialog box. Click “Next”.

Choose Source File

Step 3. Select “USB Device” to create a copy on a USB flash drive.

Choose Usb Device

Step 4. Then choose your USB drive in the drop-down list and click “Begin copying”.

Begin Copying

When your Windows ISO file is copied to your drive, install Windows by moving to the root folder of your USB drive, and then double-click Setup.exe.

Summary

No matter why you need to create a bootable USB drive, you can find a great bootable USB creator tool or method in this post. It is worth to mention that AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional is far more than a bootable USB device creator for Windows 7/8/10. It also has many other functions like splitting partitions, extending NTFS system drive without reboot, converting (system) disk between MBR and GPT partition table, etc..

If you want to create Windows Server bootable USB drive to get a portable Windows Server or troubleshoot boot issues, you can try AOMEI Partition Assistant Server edition.

Emily
Emily · Staff Editor
Emily is an English editor of AOMEI Technology; she has a great passion for providing easy solutions for people to tackle with all disk or partition management problems. In addition to writing articles about disk/partition management, she also edits great tutorials on how to back up and restore disk for data security. In her spare time, she loves to learn computer skill to improve herself or stay with her family to enjoy a good day.