Prepare a USB flash drive to install Windows

Prepare a USB flash drive to install Windows

Installing the operating system from a USB drive has become a very common way to install Windows, and it's often the best way to do it, because DVD can be damaged and the optical drive can't read it, this is a common problem in the installation, plus there are some notebooks that come without the optical drive and in this case you have to use the USB flash disk to install Windows.

There are many ways to prepare a USB flash drive and that depends on the Windows compatibility of the copy you want to install, you may want to install a copy compatible with the modern UEFI or the old BIOS.

There are many softwares out there that do the job almost automatically, but it's better to do it manually for many reasons:

- You extend your knowledge.

- You're in control of everything.

- The application or software might not be compatible with your system and might cause problems...etc. 

What do you need to install Windows from USB drive?

You need a USB drive with at least 8 GB capacity and the installation DVD or ISO file, yes that's all what you need.

Now let's see how to prepare the USB drive:

As we said before the process depends on the compatibility of the Windows copy you want to install, let's start with BIOS compatible one:

- Press Windows key+ R.

- Type cmd and press enter, this will bring the command prompt.

- Type diskpart then press enter, this will run diskpart a utility used to manage disks and partitions.

- Type list disk then press enter, this command will show a list of all the physical disks attached to the computer. the list associates number to each disk, make sure to identify the USB flash drive number because we'll use it in the next command.

- Then next step is to select our USB flash drive so that all the following commands run on it, in the exemple above it's number 1, be really careful when selecting this number because the next commands will erase everything stored on the disk, so the command will be select disk 1 then press enter.

- Type clean and press enter, this will not only erase data stored on the USB drive but delete partitions as well, it's stronger than the format command.

- Type create partition primary then press enter, this will create a primary partition.

- Type select partition 1, this will select the partition created in the previous command, note that you can omit this command since there is only one partition on the USB drive.

- Type active then press enter, this will mark the partition as active, the computer must boot from an active partition, if you forget this command you'll get "No boot device available" message when booting the computer from the USB drive.

-Type format fs=ntfs quick, this will format the USB drive using ntfs as file system and quick.

- Finally type assign then press enter and exit and press enter.