In order to do this shut down your computer, go in the CMOS setup by pressing the “DEL” or “F2″ key when the computer power on, without unplug the newly created external hard drive or USB Flash Drive from the machine. To use and boot from your newly created drive on your netbook or computer, first you have to set your computer you must set it to boot through the USB flash drive. Step 5: Boot Off The External Hard Drive or USB Flash Drive
Alternatively you can copy all the files in the virtual drive to the flash drive or external hard drive by using Windows Explorer, but using XCOPY ensures that system and hidden files are also copied. You have to type the following command line:Īgain replace the drive letters with the ones that apply to you. At this moment your new external hard disk or flash drive is bootable but you need to execute one more command in order to transfer the files to your new drive. Open the command prompt screen (as administrator) and type the commands:Īlso, don’t forget to triple check the target location so you don’t accidentally delete the boot sector of your hard diskĪfter the above step, don’t close the command prompt (at least not yet).
I’m assuming that F is your drive letter with Windows 8 ISO image and G: is the location of your external hard disk (or flash drive). Step 3: Make The External Hard Disk Bootable If you don’t have a physical optical drive you should mount the image into a virtual drive. Step 2: Mount The Windows 8 ISO Image Into A Virtual Drive If everything goes well, this is how your cmd screen will look like Please be careful using the select command (so you don’t select and format your hard disk instead) You have to replace it with the corresponding letter from your own system). Select disk z (where z is the number corresponding for your USB disk. You can do that by pressing WINKEY+R, right click on the listed file and click on “ Run as administrator“.Įnter the following commands in the same order as I did here: Just place the flash drive in the USB port of your computer.