Very often, “for treating” a computer, for reinstalling operating system and in many other cases, the user needs to use a boot disk. It would seem that there is nothing simpler - such a disc can be bought or borrowed from friends (in general, this is not a problem). But there are situations when the optical drive does not work, there is no bootable flash drive at hand, or you need to boot a netbook. The problem is fixable if you have an external HDD. But to make it bootable, you need to take care in advance, without waiting for the moment when you need it.
Some experts, in order to make a hard drive bootable, recommend using a special software. But we will take a simpler path and use standard means the operating system itself. We will consider all operations using the example of Windows 8.1. However, keep in mind that the process of creating a boot disk based on an external hard drive through Windows OS of earlier versions, in principle, is similar (the differences are not too global). So, everything is in order.
Preparing an external hard drive
Before you start with hard drive, it is necessary to transfer all important information With this device to another medium. After that, it is recommended to divide the used hard disk into 2 partitions. We will use one for our personal needs, and in the second we will create a boot disk.
1. First, we connect the external drive to the computer and go to the control panel section - "Computer Management".
Attention! Remember - all data written to an external hard drive will be deleted as a result of your actions!
If you are working with Windows 8.1, then right-click the manipulator and select Start / Disk Management.
As for previous versions of the system, they should use the control panel: Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / Storage Devices / Disk Management.
2. Now, from the list presented, you need to select your external hard drive, from which you plan to make it bootable. Be careful when choosing a device, because all data on it will be deleted!
In our case, the external disk is disk 1, already divided into 2 partitions (volumes).
3. Delete the partitions on the disk. To do this, right-click on each partition and select "Delete volume" in the menu that opens.
Note: if your external drive has only one partition, then this drive should simply be formatted.
4. Create 2 partitions on an external drive - one for the boot disk, the second for various data for our own use. To do this, on the free space that is displayed by the disk, right-click and select "Create a simple volume".
5. You will see the volume creation wizard, in which you need to specify the size of the new volume. For us, a volume of 4404 megabytes (4.18 GB) is suitable. Click "Next".
We designate the disk with a letter:
We need to format the new partition. Choose file system FAT 32, click "Next" and then "Finish".
6. Now we need to activate the created partition (this is a prerequisite, and if it is not fulfilled, then the computer with this section can't load). For this, in context menu section, select the command "Make section active" and confirm by selecting the word "Yes".
Our external drive will look like this:
7. In the same sequence, we format the additional partition, choosing the NFTS file system for it. Note that it should not be made active.
How to make an external drive bootable - the final step
Creating a system distribution kit on an external hard drive after preparing the latter does not look so difficult.
Create a distribution from a bootable DVD:
To do this, open the contents of the installation DVD in Explorer and copy all the files to the activated partition created on the external media.
Create a distribution from an ISO image:
What is an ISO disk image? This is nothing but a special archive. And if it is an archive, it means that it can always be opened. Programs such as - Daemon Tools or Total Commander. If Windows 8 (8.1) is installed on your PC, you can even open the archive using Explorer.
You need to copy all unzipped files to an external hard drive (into its active partition).
On this, perhaps, everything. You now know how to make an external hard drive bootable. In order for the computer to boot from this disk, you just need to enter the BIOS and set the boot priority for the USB HDD.
Hello admin! I have a regular computer with installed Windows 10 on an MBR disk, the BIOS is normal, that is, not UEFI. There is also a 1TB USB portable hard drive. Tell me, how can I install Windows 7 on this external USB drive, but in such a way that the seven has a separate bootloader and is it on the USB portable hard drive itself? I want Windows 7 to be a portable operating system and bootable on any computer or laptop to which I connect an external USB drive. On your site, but they all feature hard drives GPT style.
Hi all! So, the question is clear, let's get straight to the point.
I have a simple computer with Windows 10 installed this computer connect a portable USB hard drive with a capacity of 700 GB.
Computer disk management
Disk 0 is a hard drive MBR), desktop computer with Windows 8.1 installed, drive letter (C:) ( If you have Windows 10 installed, then you need to do everything in the same way).
Disc 1 is a USB portable hard drive, drive letter (D:), 700 GB, MBR. To install Windows 7 on a portable USB hard drive, be sure to connect the drive to a USB 2.0 port (black).
The USB portable hard disk contains important files and cannot be formatted.
Download and install it, then run it.
In the main window of the program, right-click on the external USB drive (D:) and click on the "Resize" button
Move the delimiter to the right, releasing free place(100 GB) at the very beginning of the USB portable hard drive and click OK. 100 GB is just enough to install Windows 7 (you can allocate more or less).
Click "Apply" and the program starts working.
"Jump"
Operation completed successfully!
Run command prompt as administrator.
diskpart
lis vol (display all partitions of drives connected to the computer in the list).
lis dis (we display a list of disks connected to the computer, we see that Disk 1, this is our external USB disk with a capacity of 700 GB)
sel dis 1 (choose Disk 1 - USB external drive)
create par primary size=100 (we create a hidden System Reserved partition with a size of 100 MB, on which we will place files Windows boot 7).
format fs=NTFS (format it to NTFS file system)
activ (make it active)
assign (assign a letter)
create partition primary (we create a partition from the remaining free space, we will install Windows 7 on this partition)
format quick fs=NTFS label Win7(format it to the NTFS file system and assign a Win7 volume label)
assign (assign a drive letter to the partition)
exit (exit diskpart)
Disk Management
We click on it double click and attach to the virtual drive (L:).
WinNTSetup3
Now it's the turn of the program.
We launch the program and in the main window, in the first field (Path to Windows installation files) click on the "Select" button,
in the explorer window that opens, find the virtual drive (L :) with Windows files 7, go to the L: \ sources folder and select the install.wim file with the left mouse, click "Open".
Note: Please note that you can choose to install any release of Windows 7.
In the middle field (Disk on which the bootloader will be installed), click "Select".
In this window, select the one we created in command line partition hidden partition System Reserved size 100 MB (the system assigned it the drive letter E :), click on the "Select Folder" button.
In the lowest third field (Disk on which Windows will be installed), click "Select".
In the explorer window that opens, select the partition we created (F :) 100 GB and click the "Select Folder" button.
Installation
In the "Use BootSect for bootloader" field, select BIOS.
Check the box next to "Allow Windows 7 Native USB Boot".
The process of installing Windows 7 on the partition (F:) of the USB portable hard drive begins.
And ends successfully.
Restart your computer or laptop.
We enter the computer's boot menu and select a USB portable hard drive to boot.
We enter the final phase of the installation of Windows 7.
Windows 7 is installed on a portable USB hard drive.
Disk management.
Installed in this way on an external USB drive, Windows 7 has its own separate bootloader.
On this computer, Windows 7 will boot from the external drive just like a regular operating system.
When connecting a USB hard drive to another computer or laptop, you will need to set the computer device to boot from an external USB drive in the first place and Windows 7 will boot on this computer device, you just have to install the drivers. But I want to note that it is best to use Windows 8.1 as a portable operating system, since it is compatible with almost any computer hardware.
"It was evening, there was nothing…". No, in truth, it didn’t start at all in the evening, but around 11 am on a weekend, when I remembered my long-standing, hitherto unrealized idea of deploying Windows 7 on a USB flash drive. I wanted to try it myself, to see in practice how it works.
So, my story will be about installing a full-fledged system on USB (flash drive, memory card, external USB HDD), and not about the banal creation of a bootable flash drive. Since the web is full of articles on how to install an operating system on a USB drive, I chose the simplest and most understandable of all the options.
For reference: there is a way using the standard Windows utilities 7diskpart, there is a way in which the program is applied UWM W7, but there is also this one, but they are all hemorrhagic (IMHO).
Therefore, I decided to conduct my little practical experience using the program pwboot-3.0.2.exe (downloads: 12701)(off page), which eliminates the smoking of long footcloths and does all the work for me, automatically. It is absolutely free and weighs little - only 1.28 MB.
I didn’t have a USB HDD at hand, 8 GB flash drives either, so I, in the form of a perversion, involved my long-suffering one in the operation Samsung smartphone Wave 8500 in which the card is installed Memory Kingston 8 GB. First of all, it was necessary to merge all the data from it onto the laptop's hard drive. Then I needed the file install.wim, which is in the directory sources disk from Windows distribution 7. This file contains actually all Windows files:
I copied the file from the original Windows 7 image, with the ability to select any edition during the installation process.
1. Run the utility PWBoot and select the default item - Windows installation:
2. Specify the path to the file install.wim and the edition of Windows 7 we want to install on the USB (in my case):
3. At the next step, you need to specify the USB drive for installing the system ( G:):
Note: please note that the program offers two installation options: the first one implies a direct installation of the OS on a USB flash drive, and the second one installs it in a virtual hard disk (VHD) file, from which you can boot from any computer under Windows control 7 editions Maximum (Ultimate) and Corporate (Enterprise), because only these Windows versions 7 support booting from VHD. Here's a bummer, dear Windows users 7 Home Premium and Professional. With the second option, there will actually be only one file on the disk, in which all your work will take place. At the same time, in the OS loaded from the VHD, the physical disk will also be visible.
5. The program wants to format the disk. Well, it is necessary, so it is necessary:
6. After formatting, the actual process of installing the OS on a USB flash drive begins:
Note: I will note that the top screenshot was taken at 11 am. Naive, I thought it would all happen quickly. It turned out that I was cruelly mistaken - a screenshot showing the 99% installation progress bar was taken at almost 22.00!
It took the program half a day to install Windows 7 on the phone's memory card, horror, and nothing more:
This is explained by the fact that the transfer protocol USB data 2.0 is much slower than data transfer over the SATA2 interface, which is used by conventional HDDs, or, moreover, modern solid-state SSD drives(there the installation of Windows takes about 10-15 minutes). At the same time, it should be noted that many modern PCs and laptops have USB 3.0 hardware support, so installations on such machines will be many times faster.
7. However, my patience and perseverance were rewarded by the appearance of the following window:
Here the process went faster:
8. Boot volume configuration:
And finally, the long-awaited finale:
As you can see from the following screenshot, the size of the installed Windows 7 Professional on the memory card was 4.75 GB:
Note: after installing Windows 7, many users are advised to “lighten” the system by removing non-critical components, disabling some services that are not supposed to be used, and turning off disk indexing. In a word, exclude to the maximum all operations, one way or another related to the load on the USB drive. In addition, attention is focused on the problem with the paging file - in order to save disk space flash drive, it can be transferred to the built-in HDD of the machine that runs portable Windows 7. If you use an external USB HDD, then due to the large amount of disk space, these precautions become irrelevant.
A few more words about potential problems that may arise when working with an OS installed on USB relate to drivers. Drivers are known to be installed on a specific system for specific hardware. Well, if you use your Windows 7 on USB as additional system for personal use on the same PC, but what if the portable “seven” is expected to be used on other machines? In this scenario, every time you connect your USB-Drive to someone else's computer, there will be a risk of incompatibility (conflict) of the equipment with drivers already available in the system for other devices. Here is what a person who has more extensive and practical knowledge on this issue writes about this (and not only):
Safety rules when working with Windows on USB disk e.
A) If you have another USB drive, then you need to connect (and also, preferably, disconnect) it to the computer before turning on the computer. Otherwise - 100% BSOD 0x7b.
B) A flash drive unfamiliar to the system for the first time must also be connected before the system starts (otherwise - BSOD 0x7b). In this case, the firewood of the flash drive will be installed normally, after which in the future the flash drive can be connected and disconnected even when the computer is running.
C) If, as a result of violating rules A) or B) (as well as other reasons), a BSOD 0x7b occurs that violates the ability to boot from USB, then you can restore this ability as follows: start in the old Windows (or in the installation DVD Win7) and execute the command "USBboot.bat X", where "X" is the letter under which the partition with the installed Win7 is visible.
By "other reasons" we mean the following. Sometimes, although rarely, flash drive firewood can spontaneously “fly off”. And when it is connected during the session, after the automatic reinstallation of firewood, a BSOD is possible.
And once my USB mouse was perceived by Vista as an "Unknown USB storage device", for which Vista, of course, could not find a driver. If this happened on the usb Win7, then it would probably not have happened without the BSOD either.
Take note of what is called.
And I, summing up my story, I want to note that as a result of the procedures described in it, my memory card was defined in BIOS as boot device. Setting the boot priority from it and saving the changes, I booted into Windows 7 Professional 32 bit from my phone. The setup process is normal, as in any normal installation, but rather slow: the system responds to each action with a little “thinking” (USB 2. with a peak speed of 64M / s - do not forget). How comfortable it is to work in it if several applications actively accessing the disk are running, I did not have time to check in practice. But this is a different story, I just conducted an experiment, the purpose of which was to find out the effectiveness of the program PWBoot.
Summary: she knows how to make “pocket Windows 7”. Successful application!
There is always an equal and opposite reaction to an action. Newton's third law.
There was a need to install a second operating room Windows systems on the removable media. Hello corporate protection. It seemed that there was nothing complicated about this, but installing Windows 7 on external devices impossible with regular means. Google, we find suitable software for installing Windows on removable drives: PwBoot and WinToUSB.
Attention, this article is not about boot disks and flash drives with software packages or installation files! This article is about boot disks and flash drives with a full-fledged Windows 7/8/10 installed on them.
Installing a second Windows operating system on a USB flash drive
Having studied the materiel, it was decided to try to install the operating system on USB Flash. I'll admit right away that I didn't succeed. You will need a flash drive of more than 8 GB and preferably USB 3.0, the speed of which is comparable to the speed of the built-in HDD. USB 2.0 is 2-4 times slower, so the operating system will slow down a lot.
Also, to install Windows, we need installation image preferably with the medicine that I downloaded from the torrent (naturally, only for review and deleted immediately after finishing writing the article). It turned out that PwBoot only works with install.wim, which is in the original image, but repackaged into other files in assemblies. It was not found in at least 2 downloaded actual cured Windows. In addition, there are problems in the future: after system changes, such as installing drivers, the system crashes into a blue screen BSOD. The problem is solved by connecting the device to a working operating system and patching the system in the PwBoot program. Or run a bat file that will start the service and edit the registry automatically every time the system is rebooted. The second option is preferable, but it's still somehow complicated. Yes, and images Windows suitable no laziness to look. In addition, you need a virtual drive program to install an operating system image (eg UltraISO).
Also, the WinNTSetup3 program caught my eye for the same purposes, but judging by the description, it is an analogue of PwBoot and install.wim will also be required.
WinToUSB gave an error - not enough space. Ok, let's try on 16 Gb - the same thing. Nothing is clear, there is clearly enough space. I did not find a solution to the problem in the search. Apparently incorrectly indicated the system and boot disks, see below.
I tried various perversions for the sake of sport: formatting a flash drive as usb hdd and just hdd with rufus - to no avail.
Perhaps I did something wrong, or was not persistent enough. But the installation on USB Flash failed, it was decided to install Windows on an external USB HDD. Volume played a decisive role memory hard disk. 16 GB for normal Windows work few.
Installing a second Windows operating system on a USB HDD
First of all, you need to partition your hard drive on the floor. I usually do this with Hiren's Boot CD installed on bootable flash drive. But in this case, you can use regular Windows tools because setting second windows carried out from under Windows.
- Go to Disk Management through Control Panel -> System and Security -> Administrative Tools -> Create and format hard disk partitions. And we create at least two sections. The first 100 MB partition is called the system partition, used for boot files and will be hidden by the system in the future. Main and active section. The second - from 50 GB, the main partition, is used for system files and is called boot. Yes, that's right: the names and purpose of the sections are reversed.
- Next, I used the WinToUSB program, everything is in Russian. The only problem is to correctly specify the system (where the boot files will be) and boot (where the system will be) disks. The program installs the operating system directly from ISO file so you don't need virtual drive disks. I installed Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate.
- After the installation is completed, we connect the portable hard drive to the computer (laptop) where portable Windows will be used or we reboot. In BIOS / UEFI, we specify booting from a portable USB HDD.
- After the installation is complete, specify the location and size of the paging file. I specified the path to the swap file of the first OS. Space saving, systems are not working at the same time, the system is constantly accessing the swap file and USB is not the best option in terms of speed.
Important notes from WinToUSB developers:
- Windows 7 is not completely portable. You may have problems with drivers when downloading to different computers, so it is highly recommended to use Windows 10/8.1/8 to create portable windows.
I didn't have any problems. The only thing that happened was that the system booted itself from the third time after installing the drivers. No interference. Just in case, run the bat file.
- Windows 7 does not have built-in USB 3.0 support, so Windows 7 will have to boot from USB port 2.0.Regular USB drives are very slow.
The speed of Windows is quite satisfactory. Did not notice any significant brakes.
- For installation and Windows startup takes a long time from a normal USB drive, we highly recommend using a USB hard drive.
- You must be an administrator on the computer on which you are installing WinToUSB.
Second hard drive for Windows 7/8/10
If you have a laptop, then the solution with installing a second operating system may be to install second hard disc instead of a CD/DVD drive. This is the best solution:
- no additional troubles with the installation of the system;
- possibility of installation SSD drive, the speed of which is 3 times higher than the HDD - Windows just flies;
- visually no interference is visible - the hard drive adapter looks like a CD / DVD drive.
In general, I will not tell why such a need arose, the main thing is that it arose and was successfully resolved, however, not immediately. There were two articles on the net, a thoughtful reading of which helped to resolve the issue, because one complements the other to some extent.
So, we need:
→Working(!) pocket for HDD;
→Hard disk aka hard drive aka Hard Disk Drive(HDD);
→Windows 7 image;
→Computer with USB ports on which we can work;
→ It is desirable that the BIOS of the device on which you plan to use the USB HDD has support for booting from USB devices. In fact, of all the problems that we will have, this will be the most non-critical, because it will be possible to load the USB bus through optical disc or diskettes. But more on that later.
So, if we try to install the OS in the usual way, we will be sent far away, Windows will warn us that it does not accept such layouts, to put it mildly, and does not want to be installed on USB media. If you install the system on the HDD by connecting directly to SATA / IDE, and then put it in your pocket and try to boot, we get a BSOD. Therefore, if you don’t have a working machine at hand, you won’t be able to do anything (at least I didn’t succeed).
It doesn't matter, we find a working computer from friends / neighbors / acquaintances, preferably with a network connection. We download a small and convenient program PWboot. The process of using the program is well described in the article, so I don’t see the point in describing it. It is important that the system is deployed to an active physical partition of the hard disk (at least it didn’t work for me otherwise). I absolutely did not need to work with VHD, so the system was installed simply on a physical disk. The process is quite fast, even when using USB 2.0. Basically, that's all.
It would seem that this could end the post, because with HDD connection via USB, we will boot the system, install the drivers, everything will be fine and fine. . After the system kindly offers to reboot in order to boot with fresh firewood and we agree with this, we will get a BSOD right after the "Starting Windows" screen.
And there is only one clue: I am not particularly familiar with the features of loading Windows 7, but in short the essence is something like this: the bootloader reads the kernel and the most important drivers (which USB does not apply to) and transfers control to the kernel, which should read everything else, but in our case it will not find anything " . Therefore, to prevent this from happening, before shutting down / restarting, you need to do the following: “set the Start key value to 0 in the address registry. And it has to be done every time after installing the drivers.
The article on Habré has
@echo off
if "%1"=="fix" goto:fix
rem -- install task
copy /y "%~f0" "%SystemRoot%\system32\usbbootfix.ba t"
SCHTASKS /Create /RU SYSTEM /SC ONEVENT /MO "* and EventID=20003]]" /EC System /TN USBBootFix /TR ""%SystemRoot%\system32\usbbootfix.b at" fix" /F
rem -- apply other settings
fsutil behavior set disablelastaccess 1
fsutil behavior set disable8dot3 1
reg add "HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\S ession Manager\Memory Management" /v DisablePagingExecutive /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\pciide /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f
reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\m sahci /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f
reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\i ntelide /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f
reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\v iaide /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f
rem -- run:fix once after install
:fix
call:fixservice usbehci "Boot Bus Extender"
call:fixservice usbohci "Boot Bus Extender"
call:fixservice usbuhci "Boot Bus Extender"
call:fixservice usbhub "System Bus Extender"
call:fixservice usbstor "SCSI miniport"
goto:eof
:fixservice
setlocal
set Start=
setGroup=
for /f "skip=2 tokens=1,2,*" %%I in ("reg query HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\% ~1") do (
if "%%I"=="Start" set Start=%%K
if "%%I"=="Group" set Group=%%K
)
if not "%Start%"=="0x0" reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\% ~1 /v Start /t REG_DWORD /d 0x0 /f
if not "%Group%"=="%~2" reg add HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\% ~1 /v Group /t REG_SZ /d "%~2" /f
endlocal
goto:eof to automate this process.
If we forgot to click on the batch file after installing the drivers, there are two ways out:
-- unhook the USB HDD, hook it up to a working machine, use PWboot ("Patch existing system" option).
-- edit the registry manually, after booting from the "resuscitator" flash drive / disk or using the Windows 7 setup tool, by pressing shift + F10 in the welcome window and typing regedit in the command line. Or using the "Windows Recovery" item, clicking "Cancel" when the troubleshooter starts (or something like that, I'm writing from memory), we will be prompted to show additional features, click and select from the proposed list of tools "Command line", then everything is the same. ATTENTION, if this is done using the “system restore tool” built into the OS, it will not help!
I will quote that
There is one more nuance, with the swap file (if there is only our USB HDD on the machine. In principle, if there is a stationary HDD, then I consider all these pandemoniums to be a complete perversion). The nuance is that after each restart of Windows, the “Performance Options” window will pop up with the ability to specify the swap ramzer. Tsimes is that if you just specify the size, the system will prompt you to reboot and ... at the same time set parameters will not be saved, and we will again contemplate the "Performance Options" window. Not critical at all, but you can solve it like this:
- download from here diskmod latest version;
- Extract files from the archive;
- Right-click on diskmod.inf and select "Install" from the context menu.
- P After that, set the size of the paging file in the "Performance Options" window. Reboot, enjoy.