How to Create Windows 10 Installation USB?

Why create a Windows 10 installation USB?

If you think that a Windows 10 Installation USB can only be used for system installation, then you might miss an important tool for computer management. A Windows install USB can do many things.

Windows installation USB is a bootable drive just like your C drive and related drives, so it can boot the computer by interfering with the usual boot procedure. Then, by specifying this drive as your boot source, you can launch the Windows Recovery Environment, which includes tools for performing repairs on any Windows 10 PC as well as checking for specific files that cannot be accessed while the system is running.

So, if your PC confronts Windows boot stuck, BSOD, and other problems that make your PC can’t boot normally, a Windows installation USB is an extremely convenient tool.

2 ways to create a Windows 10 installation USB

As we mentioned that no matter whether you want to install Windows or repair system problems, Windows bootable USB is a handy tool, then how to create a Windows clean install USB? Don’t worry, here we prepared 2 ways to help you make a Windows 10 installation USB.

Way 1. Create Windows 10 installation USB via Microsoft Media Creation Tool

Microsoft makes creating a bootable USB Flash drive for Windows 10 simple. Microsoft's Media Creation Tool may be used to produce a bootable Windows 10 USB device.

Step 1. Insert a USB Flash drive into your PC.

Step 2. Navigate to Microsoft’s Download Windows 10 page and click Download tool now under “Create Windows 10 installation media”.

This will download a file named MediaCreationTool.exe to the Downloads folder. Find it and run it.

Step 3. Click Accept when prompted. The tool will continue on “Getting a few things” ready. Select ”Accept” in the license terms screen.

Step 4. Select “Create installation media for another PC”, and then select Next.

Step 5. Choose the language, edition, and architecture (64-bit or 32-bit) for Windows 10.

Step 6. Choose ”USB flash drive” and click “Next”.

The program will download a fresh copy of the Windows 10 installation files to your device. When it is over, this data is written to your flash drive and the USB is made bootable with the newest Windows 10 setup.

Way 2. Create Windows 10 clean install USB with Command Prompt

Using Command Prompt is more complex than the first way. The preparations are the same as the first method. If you want to use this way, please carefully follow the steps.

Step 1. Open Command Prompt windows: click the “Start” button, input “cmd” in the Search box, and press “Enter”. Right-click the “Command Prompt” icon and select “Run as administrator”.

Step 2. In the pop-out Command Prompt window, type “diskpart” and press “Enter” to launch the Diskpart utility. Inside the Diskpart window, input the following commands in turn and press “Enter” after each one:

• list disk
• select disk #
• clean
• create partition primary
• select partition 1
• format fs=ntfs quick (if you plan to create UEFI bootable USB using Diskpart, type “format fs=fat32 quick” instead to format it into FAT32 file system)
• active
• exit

Now, use File Explorer to copy and paste the entire contents of the Windows ISO to the USB flash drive.

Further reading: Create a portable Windows 10 USB

For some users, if they can run their own Windows 10 on any computer (even on a Mac), it will be quite convenient. Users can build a portable personal Windows system, and this OS can directly boot without installation.

To achieve this purpose, you can choose AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, a free Windows PC manager. It is compatible with Windows 11all editions of Windows 10/8/7 and Windows XP/Vista. With it, you can create Windows bootable USB drive with ISO files or the current system.

Step 1. Download the freeware, install and run AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. Click “Tools” in the top toolbar, and choose “Windows To Go Creator”.

Step 2. Tick “Create Windows To Go for personal computer”, and then click “Next”.

Step 3. Choose “Create Windows To Go with system disc/ISO” and select the prepared ISO file. Click “Next”.

Tip: To create Windows TO GO USB with the current system, please upgrade to the Professional Edition.

Step 4. Select the USB drive you have prepared and click “Proceed”.

After it is done, you can insert the bootable USB into the target computer, change the boot order in BIOS and boot the PC from it.

Final lines

In this post, you can learn 2 ways to create a Windows 10 installation USB and one way to make a Windows 10 TO GO USB. You can choose one according to your specific requirements. AOMEI Partition Assistant is a multifunctional tool for you to manage your Windows computer, it can also clone disk, migrate OS, convert disk to MBR/GPT without deleting drives, move installed programs to release drive/disk space…

And there is the Server Edition for Windows Server users, it supports Windows Server 2022/2019/2016/2012(R2)/2008(R2)/2003.