Create a Bootable USB Drive in Minutes

Need to install or recover Windows fast? Creating a bootable USB stick is the way to go!

Rufus is my go-to tool for creating bootable USBs on Windows, especially for Windows 11.

It’s fast, portable, and dirt simple.

It can even bypass Windows 11’s strict system requirements that older devices often struggle to meet

In this guide, I’ll show you how simple it is to create bootable USBs using Rufus.

I’ll even share a secret tool I use to transform a USB drive into a multi-boot powerhouse.

What You’ll Need

Before we get into the steps, let’s go over the supplies you’ll need:

• A USB flash drive (8GB or larger): I recommend a USB 3.0 or better drive for faster performance, like the SanDisk USB 3.2 or SAMSUNG BAR Plus .

In a pinch, I’ve used older USB 2.0 drives and they work fine, just slower.

• An ISO file of the operating system: You’ll need to download this from the official source. Here are some common places to find them:
  • Windows 10: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
  • Windows 11: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11
  • macOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683
  • Linux Mint: https://linuxmint.com/download.php
  • Ubuntu: https://ubuntu.com/download

• A computer to create the bootable USB: I’ll be using a Windows 11 PC for this guide.
• Rufus: Download it from https://rufus.ie/

Prepare Your USB Drive

Plug your USB drive into your computer. This USB drive will be formatted in the process. So, backup any files elsewhere before you begin.

Open File Explorer and check what drive letter was assigned to your USB drive.

You’ll need this to identify the correct drive in Rufus.

Be very careful to select the right one, as picking the wrong drive could wipe out your computer’s hard drive!

Use Rufus to Create the Bootable USB

Rufus is the most popular app for creating bootable USB drives from an ISO.

For Windows drives, it can configure the partition scheme, remove OS requirements, create a local account for you, and more. For Linux drives, it’s mainly liked because it’s lightweight and easy to use.

I’ll use Rufus to create a bootable Windows 11 USB for demonstration:

1. Launch Rufus. It should auto-detect your USB in the Device section. Press the SELECT button and browse the downloaded ISO file.
   
2. The Image option should be Standard Windows installation. The other option (Windows To Go) is for installing Windows on a removable HDD/SSD.
   
   
3. The Partition scheme and Target system should be GPT and UEFI.
   
   These determine the partition style and expected boot mode of the PC where you’ll use this bootable USB.
   
   The other options (MBR and BIOS) are outdated and shouldn’t be used on modern systems.
   
4. The default Format Options will work fine. So, press START to begin preparing the USB.

Secret Tool: Ventoy

Now for my favorite part – if you need to make bootable USBs often, with multiple ISO files, check out Ventoy.

It’s an open source tool that lets you create a bootable USB drive that can hold multiple ISOs.

You just copy the ISO files to the USB and boot from it like normal. Ventoy will present you with a menu to choose which ISO to boot from.

It’s a huge time saver if you regularly use different operating systems or need to keep various recovery tools handy.

Use Windows Media Creation Tool

Don’t have an ISO? Or maybe you don’t want to use third-party apps. If that’s you, try out the Media Creation Tool instead. It’s an official tool for creating bootable Windows USBs.

1. Download the Media Creation Tool for the desired Windows version.
2. Launch it and accept the license terms.
3. Select USB flash drive and press Next. The ISO file option will separately download the Windows ISO for future use.
   
4. Select your USB drive from the list and press Next to start.
   

Use Diskpart (Command-line)

People often ask – can’t I just copy the setup files to the USB? Well, you can actually. But before copying the files, you need to prepare the USB with Diskpart first.

Don’t let the commands intimidate you; this method is actually very simple.

1. Press Win + R and enter diskpart. Accept the UAC prompt to launch it with admin privileges.
2. Enter list disk to list the connected drives. Note the disk # of the USB drive.
   
3. Enter sel disk # to select the USB drive.
4. Enter clean to delete all partitioning data on the disk.
5. Enter create partition primary to create a primary partition.
6. Enter sel part # to select the partition.
7. Enter active to mark this partition as active. This means the BIOS/UEFI will look for boot files in this partition (i.e., the USB is now bootable).
8. If the active command fails due to the “Selected disk is not a fixed MBR disk” error, use the commands shown below. Otherwise, ignore this step and skip ahead to Step 9.
   clean
   convert mbr
   create partition primary
   sel partition #
   active
9. Use one of the two commands shown below to format the drive with NTFS (for Windows) or FAT32 (for Linux).
   format fs=ntfs quick
   format fs=fat32 quick
   
10. Enter exit to close diskpart.
11. Finally, double-click the ISO to mount it. Then, copy the contents to the USB drive.
    

Note: Most UEFI systems can boot from a NTFS drive, but there are some rare exceptions. If your PC happens to be one of them and the USB doesn’t get detected, go back to Step 9. Format it as FAT32 this time.

Windows 11 and some Windows 10 versions have install.wim files larger than 4 GB. So, some of you will need to bypass the FAT32 4GB file size limit to copy the setup files.

There are two ways to do this with DISM . One is to split the image into two smaller ones. The other is to export only the image index that you need (e.g., Windows 11 Pro version only).

Further Steps

After the bootable USB is ready, you can connect it to whichever PC you want to install the OS on. If needed, manually boot from the USB to access the OS setup wizard.

After installing the OS, you probably won’t need the bootable USB anymore. You can reformat it to use it as a normal USB again.

Or, if it’s larger than 16 GB, you could repurpose it as a recovery drive. It can come in handy for troubleshooting boot issues or reinstalling Windows.

And finally, if you’re confused about anything related to creating the bootable USB or installing Windows, leave a comment and I’ll help you out!