How to create bootable USB drive without any Software – Using windows CMD

 

Sometimes we need to start our computer from pen drive or a USB drive especially in the following situations, we need to boot from OS:- 

• When we have a problem to boot from OS or an OS crashes.
•   Our computer/laptop CD/DVD driver is not working
•   Our Laptop does not have CD/DVD driver

Therefore, if you can boot your computer from CD/DVD due to any of the above issues, you have to try booting from USB drive. 

To boot from USB Drive, first you need to make it bootable, there are different third party software’s to make your Pen-drive bootable,

for example: Rufus, PowerISO etc.

In this blog, I will show you how to do it without any third party software, just using windows CMD, follow the following steps:

1^st: Open/start CMD using admin privilege, using one of the following methods:

  Type cmd on search box , right click and select run as admin

       

         You can also use task manager to open new cmd task  as admin , right click on a task bar to open task manager  , then click on file and select create new task

 

If you are successful in either ways, you will see the below screen, this indicates CMD is running in admin mode.

2^nd step:

      

 On this step, connect your USB drive to your computer   and on the CMD window you opened with admin, type diskpart (no space) and press enter

3^rd step:-

   Type list disk in the diskpart prompt and press enter, this will list all physical storage device on your computer

   

    4^th Step:

 Select your USB drive you want to make bootable, to do that type select disk 1 (here it  is disk 1, it might be different on yours)

            

5^th step:

Type clean, this removes all partition and volume information from the USB drive and also removes the data.

        

6^th Step:

On this step, we need to create a partition on the USB drive, to do so, type create partition primary

On this step, you need to first list disk and select the disk again

           

7^th step: select partition one, type select partition 1

           

8^th step: now we will format the usb using ntfs, to do this, type format=fs, ntfs quick , this will format the usb faster (quick) , if you omit the quick , it may take long time.

         

Finally, mark your primary partition as active, type active

        

Type Exit to exit from disk part 

Done! Now simply copy your OS installation file to this USB and check it.

N.B. you should extract the installation file, zipped file will not boot

    

           Also make sure you copy the internal files and folders, do not copy them all in one folder (send only the contents of the parent folder , excluding the parent folder)

         

    One final tip , you can still use your USB to handle your files as usual

You can also check the video here: