Bootable usb hdd. Multiboot portable disk with partition. Let's do this step by step

As if installing an OS is not something complicated, and my opinion is that it is enough to be friends with the computer and have two more hands in addition to your head - one right and the other left. To install the OS on your computer, you need a boot disk or bootable USB flash drive.

But what to do if you have neither one nor the other, the optical drive does not work, or you have a netbook? After thinking a little, I remembered that I have an external USB pocket for an HDD and a free old HDD 2.5\’\’ too. In general, if you have a pocket hard drive, you can make it bootable.

There are utilities for this purpose that can be used to do this, but I decided to use standard Windows tools.

There are a lot of descriptions and videos on the Internet, but, unfortunately, there is one problematic point that the authors for some reason omit. Well, okay, I'll start in order.

Before working with a disk, be sure to transfer and save the necessary information from this disk to another medium.

I will carry out all settings using standard Windows 8.1 tools. There may be some differences from previous Windows releases, but if there are any, they are not significant.

First of all, I want to note that making an external HDD bootable is much more convenient. I divided the disk into two partitions, one contains the Windows distribution, the other partition is for my needs.

1. We connect the USB pocket and go to Disk management.

Attention! All data on the disk will be destroyed!

If you have Windows 8 installed on your PC,1 right-click: Start/Disk Management;

If Windows is earlier versions, open the Computer Management console: Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / expand Storage Devices / left click Disk Management.

See screenshot:

2. Select an external HDD drive. Be extremely careful; if you select another disk by mistake, all information will be destroyed.

In my case, this is Disk 1. As you can see in the screenshot, the disk is divided into two volumes (partitions):

3. Delete disk partitions:

4. Create new disk partitions. One for the distribution, the second will remain for your needs:

Right-click on a free disk field and select the command in the context menu Create a simple volume:

5. In the Create Simple Volume Wizard window that appears, click the button Next:

Specify the volume size as 4404 megabytes and click Next. Please note that the size is indicated in megabytes. And since 1 gigabyte is equal to 1024 megabytes, then we get 1024×4.3 = 4403.2 megabytes for the distribution partition (mine weighs 4.18 GB, for example);

In this dialog, you need to format the new partition (FAT 32), click Next then Ready:

6. After this, you need to make the created partition active (don’t forget, because the computer will boot from this partition), to do this:

Right click the mouse and select the command in the context menu Make the section active.

We respond to the confirmation request YES.

The external HDD looks like this:

7. In the same order, we format the second partition on the disk, preferably in NTFS, but do not make it active.

Copying Windows to the active partition of an external HDD

Copying a Windows distribution to a bootable external HDD is quite simple and easy.

From boot DVD:

Open the installation DVD in Explorer, select all folders and files, and copy to the active partition of the external HDD;

From the ISO image:

By and large, an ISO image is a kind of archive. So you can open it using any archiver. You can also open the ISO image through Total Commander or Daemon Tools. Well, if you have Windows 8 or 8.1 installed on your PC, then open it with Explorer. Select all folders and files and copy them to the active partition of the external HDD;

That's it, your external HDD can act as bootable media. Just reboot and set the boot priority to USB HDD in the BIOS (depending on the BIOS type).

When you turn on the laptop, press F2 to enter the BIOS;
Go to the tab Boot;
IN Boot Priority order install USB HDD;
Click F10 and then OK.

If that doesn't work, check out this article.

Save the changes and proceed to install Windows.

As we can see from the text, preparing an external HDD for installing Windows is quite simple. And my description will not be complete if I do not talk about one problem that for some reason is rarely written about on the Internet.

Making the hard drive partition active

When I divided the hard drive into two volumes, for some reason unknown to me, not a single partition of the disk could be made active. This function was not available in the context menu.

The active partition is the partition from which the computer boots.

There are two ways to make a section active:

Using the Computer Management console. We have already considered this method, but, unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the Make partition active command may not be available. The solution to this problem is also not difficult. Remember how to prepare a bootable USB flash drive from the Command Line.
Using the Command Line, through the utility diskpart. The second method is a little more complicated, but more effective. You just need to do all the operations carefully and slowly.

Setting the active partition using the command line

1. Connect an external USB HDD;

2. Click Start/All Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt. Right-click and select Run as administrator.

3. In the window that opens, write the command diskpart and press the button Enter. An invitation line to work with the utility will appear – DISKPART>;

4. Enter the command list disk and press the button Enter. You will see all the disks installed on your computer;

5. We select the disk with which we will work. To do this, enter the command select disk 0, where “0” is the disk number in the list, i.e. for my external drive there will be a command select disk 1. Click the button Enter, the message Disk 1 selected will appear;

6. Next, you need to find all partitions on the selected disk. Enter the command list partition and press the button Enter.

7. We select the section we will work with. Enter the command select partition 1, where 1 is the section number in the list, i.e. for the section that we make active. Click Enter, a message will appear Section 1 selected.

8. Mark the selected partition as active, to do this, enter the command active. Click the button Enter, a message will appear DiskPart: Partition marked as active.

That's all. I wish you good luck.

Date: 12:06 06/01/2019

Yes... An experienced admin should have everything =) and a hard drive is not only a very large and capacious flash drive! Unlike a flash drive, you can make several partitions on it for different needs - for information, for garbage, and also make a boot partition...

The question is - why?

I personally needed it to install slax-linux there! What this gives is a familiar environment for working in any conditions, on any computer... but it happens that Linux is very often used to fix its poor brother - Windows... For example, remove files from a dead Windows, repartition the hard drive, change forgotten password in Windows, it is possible to manually find and remove malware or use Clam antivirus... You can also make a system image using dd...

Nowadays, external hard drives are quite capacious, and if there is data on it, it can be problematic to dump it somewhere so as not to lose it during formatting...

But this is not important, the important thing is that we only need 20-30 free gigabytes - a little for the system and not a lot for data and related software.

And so let's start creating a boot disk....

We will need an external hard drive, ideally empty, not ideally with data, it would be better if it has a 3.0 interface (even USB 2.0) it works significantly faster.

Also OS Windows XP or higher.

Free program for partitioning hard drives Wondershare Disk Manager Free (perverts can get by with Disk Manager in Windows)

In my case, this is Disk1 and it is not partitioned. In your case, there will be one partition, possibly NTFS, but as a rule the default is FAT32.

I'll have to create a couple of partitions:

I allocate sufficient space for the boot disk and click Next

And in order not to suffer in the distant future, I set the disk label - BOOT (not necessary) in the line below, Partition Type - select Primary. then, by analogy, I create a second partition with the NTFS type and a label, usually Data, only not Primary, but Logical.

Click Apply in the toolbar and agree. Our hard drive is repartitioned, as a rule - this is a matter of seconds.

If there is a disk with data and there is a lot of it and there is nowhere to make a backup... Then we take a risk - we change the size of the existing size:

Allocate enough free space:

And create a Primary partition with FAT32 and the BOOT label:

Click Apply again and wait... how long depends on the amount of data, since the data will be moved to the end of the disk from the freed space. Once I allocated 30 gigabytes, it took about 5 hours.... So, be patient and pray that the electricity doesn’t run out!

Ideally, of course, make a backup of the data...

So, the disk is partitioned as it should, but you cannot boot from it yet. The Primary partition must be marked as active so that the computer’s Bios understands that it can boot from it:

We agree and click Apply and as a result, the disk becomes bootable.

If we want to install Windows from it, then simply copy the files from the Windows 7, 8, 8.1 installation disk to the root of the Boot disk and we can boot and install....

If we still need to install an OS for a thuja heap of various operations, then - =)

The method is simple, convenient, but has some limitations and is not the most convenient: to record each image you need to resort to the utility again; simply copying the ISO to a flash drive is not enough. What if we could simply copy ISO images onto a bootable USB flash drive with any systems, LiveCDs and utilities and they would be automatically available for download? - this can be the Easy2Boot utility, and the drive can be in the NTFS file system and boot in both UEFI and Legacy systems.

This manual details the use of Easy2Boot (not to be confused with the paid EasyBoot program from the creators of UltraISO) in conjunction with RMPrepUSB (and without this utility). The method may seem complicated to some, but in fact, it is even simpler than some, just follow the instructions and you will be pleased with the ability to create multi-boot USB drives. See also:

The instructions further describe the basic steps for recording a bootable drive using Easy2Boot; in fact, there are many nuances in using the utility, which are described scatteredly on the official website and sometimes you have to read carefully what’s what. But for most applications, the steps described below will suffice.

Preparing images for UEFI boot using Easy2Boot and boot process

By default, we can only boot from a flash drive in Legacy mode. The following mechanism is proposed for booting into UEFI:

The boot itself in EFI mode (disabling Secure Boot in the BIOS may or may not be required, depending on the image itself and the presence of the rEFInd boot loader, which is not written by default) looks like this:

How does this even work? After “Changing the E2B partition” in the first step, your imgPTN image is mounted on the flash drive and as a result, it’s as if nothing else is on it - i.e. we are loaded as if “directly” into the image. Accordingly, the flash drive ceases to be multiboot (although all the data remains on it).

To return the drive to its original state, open the e2b folder on the flash drive and run the RestoreE2B.cmd file as administrator.

Additional information

Some additional information, which I will try to update as new information becomes available, and, as I mentioned, there are a lot of nuances in the program:

If in the folder with the image file (the format is not important) you place a file with the same name, but the extension .txt and the contents in one line title MENU ITEM NAME, then your name will be displayed in the menu for this file.
There is a file in the _ISO folder on the flash drive E2B_Editor to edit the background, colors and other boot menu options.
By using \_ISO\SUB_MENU_Maker.cmd You can add your own partitions in the Easy2Boot main menu.
The MPI Tool Pack includes a Split WinISO utility for splitting Windows image files into several files for placing large images on a FAT32 flash drive.
If you are using an external hard drive or flash drive, which is recognized by the system as a local drive and not a removable drive, then when installing Windows 10, 8.1 and Windows 7, you may be informed that drivers are missing. The imgPTN image method solves this, but can potentially cause data loss on the drive.

Video instruction Easy2Boot

Everything below was written to use the previous version of Easy2Boot and, as far as I can tell, this method should still work, so I am not removing it from the instructions. Also, if you have your own findings on using the utility, I will be glad to hear your comments.

Early Easy2Boot method for creating a drive (still works)

The following files were checked by VirusTotal, everything is clean, with the exception of a couple of threats (which are not) in Easy2Boot, which are associated with the implementation of working with Windows installation ISO images.

We will need RMPrepUSB, take here https://www.rmprepusb.com/documents/rmprepusb-beta-versions (the site is sometimes poorly accessible), download links are towards the end of the page, I took the RMPrepUSB_Portable file, that is, not the installation file. Everything works.

You will also need an archive with Easy2Boot files. You can download here: http://www.easy2boot.com/download/

The process of preparing an Easy2Boot multiboot flash drive

Unzip (if portable) or install RMPrepUSB and run it. Easy2Boot does not need to be unpacked. The flash drive is hopefully already connected.

In RMPrepUSB, check the “No User Prompts” option
Partition Size - MAX, volume label - any
Filesystem and Overrides - FAT32 + Boot as HDD or NTFS + Boot as HDD. FAT32 is supported by a large number of operating systems, but does not work with files larger than 4 GB.
Check the option “Copy OS files from here”, specify the path to the unpacked archive with Easy2Boot, answer “No” to the request that appears.

Do not exit RMPrepUSB, you will still need the program (if you exit, it’s okay). Open the contents of the flash drive in Explorer (or another file manager) and go to the _ISO folder, there you will see the following folder structure:

Note: in the folderdocs you will find documentation in English on editing menus, design and other features.

The next step to create a multiboot flash drive is to transfer all the necessary ISO images to the desired folders (you can use several images for one OS), for example:

Windows 10 - in _ISO\WINDOWS\WIN10
Windows 8 and 8.1 - in _ISO\WINDOWS\WIN8
Antivirus ISOs - in _ISO\Antivirus

After all the necessary images have been transferred to the flash drive, press Ctrl+F2 in RMPrepUSB or select Drive - Make All Files on Drive Contiguous from the menu. Once the operation is complete, the flash drive is ready and you can either boot from it or press F11 to test it in QEMU.

Fixing media driver error when booting from USB HDD or USB flash drive Easy2Boot

This addition to the instructions was prepared by a reader under the nickname Tiger333 (his other tips can be found in the comments below), for which many thanks to him.

When installing Windows images using Easy2Boot, the installer often displays an error stating that the media driver is missing. Below is how to fix this.

You will need:

Flash drive of any size (you just need a flash drive).
RMPrepUSB_Portable.
Your USB-HDD or flash drive with installed (working) Easy2Boot.

To create the Easy2Boot virtual drive driver, we prepare a flash drive in almost the same way as when installing Easy2Boot.

In the RMPrepUSB program, check the “No User Prompts” option
Partition Size - MAX, volume label - HELPER
Boot sector (Bootloader Options) - Win PE v2
Filesystem and Overrides - FAT32 + Boot as HDD
Click the “Prepare disk” button (all data from the flash drive will be deleted) and wait.
Click the "Install grub4dos" button, answer "No" when asked about PBR or MBR.
Go to your USB-HDD or flash drive with Easy2Boot, go to \_ISO\ docs\ USB FLASH DRIVE HELPER FILES. Copy everything from this folder to the prepared flash drive.

Your virtual drive is ready. Now you need to “introduce” the virtual drive and Easy2Boot.

Remove the flash drive with the drive from the computer (insert a USB-HDD or a flash drive with Easy2Boot, if removed). Run RMPrepUSB (if closed) and click “run from QEMU (F11)”. While loading Easy2Boot, insert your USB flash drive into your computer and wait for the menu to load.

Close the QEMU window, go to your USB-HDD or flash drive with Easy2Boot and look at the AutoUnattend.xml and Unattend.xml files. They should be 100KB each, if this is not the case, repeat the dating procedure (I only succeeded the third time). Now they are ready to work together and problems with the missing driver will disappear.

How to properly use a flash drive with a drive? Let me make a reservation right away: this flash drive will only work with a USB-HDD or an Easy2Boot flash drive. Using a flash drive with a drive is quite simple:

While loading Easy2Boot, insert your USB flash drive into your computer and wait for the menu to load.
Select the Windows image, and when asked by Easy2Boot “how to install”, select .ISO, then follow the instructions for installing the OS.

Problems that may arise:

Windows again gives the error that the media driver is missing. Reason: You may have inserted a USB-HDD or flash drive into USB 3.0. How to fix: change them to USB 2.0
The counter 1 2 3 starts on the screen and constantly repeats, Easy2Boot does not load. Reason: You may have inserted a USB flash drive with a drive too early or immediately with a USB-HDD or Easy2Boot flash drive. How to fix: turn on the USB flash drive as soon as Easy2Boot starts loading (the first boot words appear).

Notes on using and changing a multiboot flash drive

If some ISOs do not load correctly, change their extension to .isoask, in this case, when you launch this ISO from the boot menu of the flash drive, you will be able to select different options for launching it and find the appropriate one.
At any time you can add new or delete old images from the flash drive. After that, don't forget to use Ctrl+F2 (Make All Files on Drive Contiguous) in RMPrepUSB.
When installing Windows 7, Windows 8 or 8.1, you will be asked which key to use: you can enter it yourself, use a trial key from Microsoft, or install without entering a key (activation will still be required later). I am writing this note because you should not be surprised by the appearance of a menu that was not there before when installing Windows; it has little effect on anything.

For some special hardware configurations, it is best to go to the developer’s official website and read about how to solve possible problems - there is plenty of material there. You can also ask questions in the comments, I will try to answer.

Anyone who has at least once encountered installing the Microsoft Windows operating system knows that you can create a bootable DVD or bootable flash drive, the latter is often used due to its large bandwidth, which speeds up the installation of Windows.
But how to go further and create a bootable hard drive? And we'll talk about this below.

In fact, it has been possible to create bootable hard drives for a long time; the ability to install from them was available with images of the operating systems Windows 7, 8 and 10. After creating it and connecting it to a personal computer, the installation procedure will look the same as from a DVD disk or USB drive.

Let's do this step by step.

First step, this is connecting our hard drive to another computer on which the image we need is recorded and the operating system is already installed. Once connected, for proper operation, it is recommended to format it using Microsoft Windows, just as is done with a regular flash drive. Formatting is carried out in the NTFS file system.

Step two, after formatting is complete, we will use a small program called BOOTTICE, with which we will create a bootable hard drive (you need to run it as an administrator). In the program, go to the “Physical Disks” tab and select our disk from the drop-down list, then click “Process MBR”.

In the window that opens, we need to select the “GRUB4DOS” option and then click the “Install / Config” button at the bottom.

A window will open in front of us, where we need to successively press two buttons “Read from disk” and “Save to disk”, after completing the operation, click “OK”.

Step three, recording the operating system image to our created bootable hard drive. It is enough to take the desired image of Windows 7, 8 or 10 (.ISO file) and unpack it directly to our disk.

The fourth and final step is to connect our drive to a personal computer. In the BIOS we select to boot from our HDD, where after saving the settings we will begin installing the Microsoft Windows operating system.

But what to do if you have neither one nor the other, the optical drive does not work, or you have a netbook? After thinking a little, I remembered that I have an external USB pocket for an HDD and a free old 2.5' HDD too. In general, if you have a pocket hard drive, you can make it bootable.

There are utilities for this purpose that can be used to do this, but I decided to use standard Windows tools.

There are a lot of descriptions and videos on the Internet, but, unfortunately, there is one problematic point that the authors for some reason omit. Well, okay, I'll start in order.

Preparing an external HDD

Before working with a disk, be sure to transfer and save the necessary information from this disk to another medium.

I will carry out all settings using standard Windows 8.1 tools. There may be some differences from previous Windows releases, but if there are any, they are not significant.

1. We connect the USB pocket and go to Disk management.

Attention! All data on the disk will be destroyed!

If you have Windows 8 installed on your PC,1 right-click: Start/Disk Management;

If Windows is earlier versions, open the Computer Management console: Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / expand Storage Devices / left click Disk Management.

See screenshot:

2. Select an external HDD drive. Be extremely careful; if you select another disk by mistake, all information will be destroyed.

In my case, this is Disk 1. As you can see in the screenshot, the disk is divided into two volumes (partitions):

3. Delete disk partitions:

4. Create new disk partitions. One for the distribution, the second will remain for your needs:

Right-click on a free disk field and select the command in the context menu Create a simple volume:

5. In the Create Simple Volume Wizard window that appears, click the button Next:

Specify the volume size as 4404 megabytes and click Next. Please note that the size is indicated in megabytes. And since 1 gigabyte is equal to 1024 megabytes, then 1024 × 4.3 = 4403.2 megabytes we get for the distribution section (mine weighs 4.18 GB, for example);

In this dialog, you need to format the new partition (FAT 32), click Next then Ready:

6. After this, you need to make the created partition active (don't forget because the computer will boot from this partition), for this:

Right click the mouse and select the command in the context menu Make the section active.

We respond to the confirmation request YES.

The external HDD looks like this:

7. We format the second partition on the disk in the same order, preferably in NTFS, but do not make it active.

Copying Windows to the active partition of an external HDD

Copying a Windows distribution to a bootable external HDD is quite simple and easy.

From boot DVD:

Open the installation DVD in Explorer, select all folders and files, and copy to the active partition of the external HDD;

From the ISO image:

That's it, your external HDD can act as bootable media. Just reboot and set USB HDD as boot priority in BIOS (depending on BIOS type).

When you turn on the laptop, press F2, to ;
Go to the tab Boot;
IN Boot Priority order install USB HDD;
Click F10 and then OK.

If it doesn’t work, then look at the article.

Save the changes and proceed.

Making the hard drive partition active

When I divided the hard drive into two volumes, for some reason unknown to me, not a single partition of the disk could be made active. This function was not available in the context menu.

The active partition is the partition from which the computer boots.

There are two ways to make a section active:

Using the Computer Management console. We have already considered this method, but, unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the Make partition active command may not be available. The solution to this problem is also not difficult. Remember how to prepare a bootable USB flash drive from the Command Line.
Using the Command Line, through the utility diskpart. The second method is a little more complicated, but more effective. You just need to do all the operations carefully and slowly.

Setting the active partition using the command line

1. Connect an external USB HDD;

2. Click Start/All Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt. Right-click and select Run as administrator.

3. In the window that opens, write the command diskpart and press the button Enter. An invitation line to work with the utility will appear – DISKPART>;

4. Enter the command list disk and press the button Enter. You will see all the disks installed on your computer;