Create a Bootable Drive the Easy Way!

If you are like me, you have a stack of flash drives in a cup beside your desk.  Every once and a while I need to wipe a machine in my lab environment and put a different OS on it.  This is when re-purposing these old flash drives actually becomes useful.

Creating a bootable drive is extremely easy and can be quickly done via Windows CMD.  First you need to open a command window as ADMINISTRATOR.  Follow the commands/pictures below and you should be good to go. 

*CAUTION*  Make sure you select the correct disk.  You could inadvertently completely wipe precious data

Open CMD as Administrator.  Open the "diskpart" application from the terminal you just opened.


We need to select the correct Disk you want to make into a bootable drive.  Below you will see I have 3.  First is my SSD, second is an external hard drive and the last one is the flash drive I want to wipe and make into a bootable drive.


I choose the correct disk with "select disk #"  Don't mess up this part, because you will have a bad day if you pick the wrong one.


With the the correct disk selected it is time to wipe it.
We use the command "clean" to accomplish this.

We now have a wiped disk, it is time to create the partition that will hold our ISO file.



I always type "list partition" even though it is not entirely necessary.  It puts my mind at ease.  You don't technically need to do this part.


Above you can see that the primary partition that we made is automatically selected.  If for some reason the partition is not selected type "select partition 1" see below.



Now we will make this partition have a FS(File System).  This part is important and as you can see I have selected "ntfs" "New Technology File System."  
There are lots of options, choose the one that is appropriate for you (exfat,ntfs,ext2,ext3,ext4)


Type "active."  When you plug this flash drive in, and choose to boot from it, the partition containing your data marked as active will be selected.



Closing diskpart with "exit"


Now you need to add the OS data that you will be booting onto the hardware.  

Locate the ".iso" file in your file manager> right click and select "mount"> a window will open showing all the files in the iso file> copy all these and paste them in the bootable drive you just created.

There you go!!  You now have a bootable drive you can use to put a new OS on a spare computer around your house.

I have been uploading a ton of videos to my YouTube channel.  Take a look!

https://www.youtube.com/c/RedBlueLabs

[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server-essentials/install/create-a-bootable-usb-flash-drive

Popular Posts