How to make a usb flash drive bootable. How to make a flash drive as a hard drive: step-by-step instructions, advice from experts

Useful tips

If your operating system crashes or it produces a lot of errors (bugs) during operation, then you need to reinstall the system. Since a huge number of different laptops, netbooks and other devices with a missing CD/DVD drive have appeared on the market, the need for a bootable flash drive is greatly increasing. Since buying an external CD/DVD drive is quite expensive and not particularly in demand. And now I’ll tell you how to create a bootable USB flash drive with your own hands, at home, using the three most common methods.

Bootable USB flash drive using Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool

Let me start by telling you about the simplest and fastest way to create a bootable USB flash drive from Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool - this is a good utility from Microsoft, designed to easily and conveniently create a bootable system on various types of removable media. This makes it easier to create a bootable flash drive for users of laptops, netbooks and owners of personal computers with a faulty drive. Next, let's look at the step-by-step creation of a bootable USB flash drive using this program:

Download and install Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool.
We run our program as administrator. To do this, right-click on the program shortcut and select “Run as administrator.”
The Microsoft Store program window will appear in front of you. You must click the “Browse” button to select the operating system to create the ISO image.
After making your selection, click the “Next” button.
Next, the following window will appear in front of you, in which you will be offered the choice of recording to a DVD or USB drive. Since we want to create a bootable USB flash drive, we need to select the “USB devise” item.
The program will then prompt you to select the USB drive on which you want to burn the operating system image. You select the flash drive you need and click the “Begin copying” button.
Next, the program will format and install automatically.
After some time, the loading bar will reach 100% and the message “Backup completed” will appear in your status, which in turn will signal that the creation of the bootable flash drive has been completed.
We close our program and now you can use the bootable USB flash drive for its intended purpose.

Bootable USB flash drive using UltraISO utility

Now let's look at one of the most popular and widespread programs. UltraISO - a program designed to read, edit and create disk images. This program is very simple and convenient for ordinary personal computer users. This program will be useful for your work, because it can work with more than 30 file formats. Now let's figure out how to create a bootable USB flash drive using the UltraISO program in step-by-step instructions.

Download and install the UltraISO program.
Right-click on the UltraISO program shortcut and select “Run as administrator.”
On the toolbar, click on the “File” tab and select “Open”. Or press Ctrl+O.
Then we select the operating system image we need to create a bootable flash drive. For example, I have selected the image of the operating system Windows 7 Ultimate Ru x86-x64 Orig wBootMenu by-ovgorskiy.
Left-click on the name of the operating system (thus we select it).
Open the “Bootboot” tab. Select the option “Burn hard disk image”.
After this, a pop-up window will appear in front of you, where you need to check whether the correct flash drive is selected, the correct operating system, as well as the method for writing the bootable flash drive. It must be installed in USB-HDD format. We check and click on the “Record” button.
Next, the installation of data on the flash drive begins.
After a while you will see the message “Recording complete”. This message will inform you that you have completed creating your bootable USB flash drive.
Once completed, close the program and use your USB flash drive to install the operating system.

Bootable USB flash drive using Windows command line

This method of creating a bootable USB flash drive does not require additional programs and utilities. And only because of this he deserves to tell you about him. It is a little more complicated and will take you a little more time than with the programs we discussed above. Next, we will analyze all our actions step by step:

Call up the “Run” window. To do this, press two Win + R keys simultaneously. Only you may have a different name. Vyacheslav's place will be yours.
Enter the command “cmd” into the empty field. This command will open a command prompt. Next we will work in it.
At the command line, enter the “DISKPART” command.
Then enter the command “list disk”. This command will give us the opportunity to see the drives connected to the PC.
Enter the command “select disk 1”. With this command we select our flash drive.
Next, we clean our flash drive. To do this, enter the “clean” command.
The next step is to create a primary partition. To do this, enter the command “create partition primary”.
We need to select the partition that we just selected using the “select partition” command.
Enter the command “active”. This command will make the selected partition active.
Next, you need to format the flash drive in NTFS. To do this, type the command “format fs=NTFS”.
We are waiting for the system to format your flash drive to 100%.
Next, we’ll give a letter name to our flash drive. To do this, use the command “assign letter=O”. Choose the letter for the name of the flash drive yourself. For me it's the letter O.
After this, the “Removable Disk O” folder will open.
At the command line, enter the “Exit” command. This command will close the command prompt.
We transfer all the operating system files to the “Removable Disk O” folder. Files must be copied (transferred) only in unpacked form. You should not simply copy the operating system image in one file; such a flash drive will not work.
The bootable USB flash drive is ready for use.

Unfortunately, there are often problems with a computer system that are not easy to solve. Someone needs to reinstall the OS or restore the PC sooner or later. It is not always possible to access the hard drive to roll back the system or install a new one. That's why experts use a flash drive.

It is much more convenient to use than carrying around a heavy hard drive. But to do this you will have to learn how to do it. Many people think that it is difficult to do this. But if you follow the instructions, everything will be much simpler. For everything to work out, you need to get a flash drive or memory card.

Preparation

Before you make a flash drive into a hard drive, you need to prepare everything for this process. First, it's worth understanding multipartition. As practice shows, it will have to be abandoned, since flash media cannot handle other partitions, but only work with the first block.

Next, you need to check whether Windows works with a flash drive. Afterwards you will have to configure the drive to be recognized as a non-removable device. A flash drive is almost always displayed as a removable drive, and the system should “think” that a hard drive is installed.

Before you make a flash drive into a hard drive, you need to understand that if you do something wrong, you can damage the device. If the setting is incorrect, the drive will not be able to change its connection parameter. Experts suggest using a special driver.

First stage

Is it possible to turn a flash drive into a hard drive? It is possible, and it will be easy to do, it is only important to follow the instructions. After connecting the flash drive, you will need to determine its type. This can be done in two ways: using two commands or a special menu.

To do this, you need to open the drive management manager. Using the Win + R combination, you can launch the Run menu. You will have to enter the command diskmgmt.msc in the search bar. The drive information appears.

You can also use In a new window you will need to enter the following command - list volume. To identify a flash drive in the list, just look at the storage capacity. You can also view the media type in properties. Just go to the Volumes tab.

Second phase

How to make a flash drive a hard drive? After determining the drive type, you will need to either change the connection or continue working with it. If the flash drive is still detected as a removable device, you need to install a filter driver. To do this, you can use the Hitachi Microdrive utility. Thanks to it, you can not “physically” change the properties of a flash drive, but “deceive” the system by passing off the drive as a hard drive. Next, you can make the flash drive a hard drive. The system will allow you to divide the archive into several blocks, which will have to work simultaneously. It will be enough to install the necessary software.

Third stage

Next you will need to find the carrier number. Go to “My Computer”, find the connected flash drive and right-click. Having selected “Properties”, go to “Details” and in “Properties” select “Path to device instance”. The device number will appear below. In this line you need to copy the characters after the second slash. The numbers will be needed for the Hitachi Microdrive program. Next, you will need to find out the bit capacity of the system in order to understand the drive settings.

To do this, just go to “My Computer”, right-click on the free area and select “Properties”. A new dialog box will display information about the system and its bit capacity. After this you can configure the program.

Setting up the Hitachi Microdrive utility

If your computer runs at 64 bit, you will have to go to the program folder. In it, find the cfadisk document, find the chapter cfadisk_device and cfadisk_device.NTamd64. After the slash you will need to paste the copied equipment number. If the computer is running on 32 bits, you must use the cfadisk_device chapter. Find the line DISK&VEN_&PROD_USB_DISK_2.0&REV_P and insert the media number instead.

Fourth stage

The last step is replacing the drivers. If you have a 64-bit OS installed, you will need to configure one more setting. For correct operation and installation of drivers, you will have to disable digital signature verification, otherwise the system will suspect fraud. In addition, it can update itself, which, naturally, is undesirable for the process.

Now you can start the installation. Open the “Drivers” tab and select “Download drivers”. Here you need to specify the path to the folder with the utility driver. The system will detect that the digital signature is disabled, and then ask you to restart the PC. After a reboot, the flash drive will work as a non-removable drive.

Working with a hard drive

It is also possible to try to figure out how to make a bootable USB flash drive from a hard drive. Here it is enough to configure the hard drive to work with the OS. Through the “Control Panel” you need to go to “Administration” and “Computer Management”. In the left column we find “Disk Management”. All information about the hard drive partitions will appear in the table on the right. Now you need to format the hard drive and delete all partitions. After this, you will have to partition the disk and create a new volume. It will be enough to designate it as active and write the operating system there.

Alternative

Thinking about how to make a flash drive an external hard drive also leads the user to the Lexar Bootlt utility. It is not often talked about, although it is very simple and effective for this task.

The utility is free and helps to convert a flash drive into a fixed device. By the way, thanks to the same program you can return the drive to a removable type. The software is designed for Lexar devices, but easily copes with other flash drives. Also works with Windows starting from XP.

But there are still some nuances associated with this program. The utility works with branded devices, but sometimes fails with other drives. May fail when connecting via USB 3.0 interface. And it is important to remember that after flashing any device, the warranty is lost.

After installing Lexar Bootlt, you need to run the program as an administrator, select a flash drive in the list, and then click on the Flip Removable Bit command. Next you need to save the change and restart the PC.

Working with a laptop

Is it possible to turn a laptop hard drive into a flash drive? As practice shows, laptops do not last forever, so many users simply abandon the device or simply sell it. But you can benefit from it by turning the hard drive into a drive. Usually it is enough to purchase a special box in which to place the hard drive.

This option is suitable for hard drives that were installed in older models. For example, you can use a hard drive with a capacity of 4 to 100 GB. Larger devices may not work over the rather slow USB interface. A box like this costs about 10-20 dollars. It comes with the necessary cord to connect the drive to a PC. To install the hard drive, there are screws that will securely secure the hard drive in the case.

Working with a hard drive and flash drive is not easy. You must be careful not to damage the drive. You should also follow the driver installation instructions and use the commands carefully.

Experts advise immediately figuring out how to remove program drivers. In our case we are talking about Hitachi Microdrive. To do this, you need to open the properties of the hard drive and select driver update. This process will automatically get rid of third-party installations and load the native driver.

Changing the settings of a flash drive will void the user's warranty, so it is better not to experiment with a newly purchased device. In addition, if you make a mistake in the settings, you can lose your drive.

USB flash drive- a common device that everyone who has their own personal computer probably has at home. Today there is a wide variety of flash drives. As a rule, they have a plastic or metal body, although there are also more original options. But what to do if the casing of your flash drive is damaged or for some reason no longer suits you, but you don’t want to buy a new one? In this article we will tell you how to replace the old plastic or metal casing of your flash drive with a new wooden one.

How to make a case for a flash drive?

In order to make a wooden case for a flash drive, we will need the following tools:

USB flash drive without housing.

A piece of wood.

Drill or other drilling device.

Sandpaper.

Silicone.

Clamps, 2 pcs.

Pencil.

Let's start making!

1. First, determine the size of the body you need and use a saw to cut out a rectangle of the appropriate size from a piece of wood along the marked marks.

3. Using a drill, cut blind holes in the large and medium pieces of wood and a through hole in the smallest piece. The holes should be of such a size that a USB drive can easily fit into them and hold well. In the middle part, which will serve as a lid, small gaps should be made inside the hole so that the lid can close tightly and open easily.

4. Insert the USB drive into the through hole of the small piece so that the connector protrudes on one side and the rest of the flash drive is on the other. If the flash drive does not fit tightly in the hole, fix it with silicone.

5. Now stick the protruding long part of the flash drive into the hole of the largest piece, after applying hot glue to both parts and using a press, glue them into one body. It is necessary to use a press so that both parts are tightly fastened together, and after grinding no gaps are visible between them.

6. Now thoroughly sand the entire body with sandpaper to give it a neater, smoother appearance. You can also coat the case with paint or varnish. Our original wooden flash drive is ready!

In this article I will describe several ways to make a bootable USB flash drive for free and without much effort:

Let me explain why I chose these three options, so:

The advantages of creating a bootable USB flash drive using the UltraISO program are that even in trial (free) mode, this program will help you create a bootable USB flash drive without any problems and it also has many different functions. The disadvantages (if they can be considered such) are that it needs to be downloaded and installed; the installation process itself consists of pressing the Next button 4 times. In my opinion, the ideal third-party solution for creating a bootable USB flash drive for Windows XP, 7, 8.

Creating a bootable USB flash drive using a utility from Microsoft - USB/DVD Download Tool, the advantage of this method is that without special skills and abilities, thanks to a few clicks of the mouse you get a bootable flash drive. Minus - an official (downloaded from the Microsoft website) ISO image of the operating system is required, otherwise the utility may not accept your ISO image and refuse to write it to a flash drive, or it will give an error when creating the image (I personally encountered such problems, which is why I think it is necessary to indicate them ).

And finally, creating a bootable USB flash drive using the Windows 7 command line. The big advantage of this method is that you don’t need to install anything, but simply by entering a few commands, you will get a bootable flash drive with Windows XP, 7, 8. I don’t even know the disadvantages of this method ...probably only because it is not attractive, since all commands are executed on the command line.

So, to create a bootable USB flash drive you will need:

1 Flash drive with a capacity of at least 4 Gb (everything must be removed from the flash drive, as it will be formatted)

2 ISO system image

3 BIOS, which will allow you to start installation from a flash drive

4 Utility for creating an image (UltraISO, USB/DVD Download Tool)

If you have all this, then let's get started:

Creating a bootable USB flash drive using the UltraISO program.

First of all, download the latest version Ultra ISO .

After that, start the installation of the program, click "Further"

We agree to the license agreement

Select or leave the default installation location for the program

After this, the UltraISO program will open, click "File-Open"

Select an ISO system image, in this example Windows 8 will be used

After that, click "Boot - Burn Hard Disk Image..."

In the next window, select the device on which the image will be written and click "Record".

After this, a warning window will appear indicating that everything will be deleted from the flash drive, click "Yes".

Then the recording process will begin, which will last several minutes.

After the writing process to the USB flash drive is completed, it becomes bootable.

To create a bootable flash drive, we will use programs from both a third-party manufacturer and the built-in Windows command interpreter. Each method is different and has its own specifics, but I think that a simple end user will be able to cope with creating a bootable flash drive using any of the proposed methods:

how to make a bootable USB flash drive using the command line
how to make a bootable USB flash drive using UltraISO
how to make a bootable USB flash drive using Windows7 USB/DVD Download Tool

If you are interested in information about creating a bootable USB flash drive for the Linux operating system family, then you can read the information at this link “bootable USB flash drive for Linux”.

So, I propose to start creating a bootable flash drive in order, as defined in the above list, accordingly we proceed to the first method.

BOOT FLASH DRIVE using the command line (method I)

Next, we will use only those commands that we need when creating a bootable flash drive. Therefore, the figure below shows the sequential entry of commands to create a bootable USB flash drive. And please pay attention to the fact that the commands you enter are indicated by a red underline!

Graphical representation of command input on the command line

Now let's describe the previously entered commands:

DISKPART- launch the program, a text-mode command interpreter that allows you to manage objects (disks, partitions or volumes) using scripts or directly entering commands from the command line.

list disk- display a list of disk drives connected to a personal computer.

select disk 1- select disk number “1”, since in our case it is a removable flash drive.

clean- clears all data from removable media - flash drive.

create partition primary- create a primary partition.

select partition 1- select the created section.

active- make the section active.

format fs=NTFS- format the flash drive in the NTFS file system.

assign letter=T- if necessary, you can assign a letter for the flash drive in this way.

Exit- exit the DISKPART program.

BOOTABLE FLASH DRIVE CREATED!

NOTE: Once you have created a bootable USB flash drive, you need to transfer the operating system files to this removable media. Files must be transferred in unpacked form, do not under any circumstances simply add an operating system image, for example one *.ISO file, it WILL NOT WORK!!!

You can see the complete list of Diskpart program commands in the following table:

Table of commands of the "DISKPART" program

TEAM	EXPLANATION
ACTIVE	- Mark the selected section as active.
ADD	- Adding a mirror to a simple volume.
ASSIGN	- Assign a name or mount point to the selected volume.
ATTRIBUTES	- Working with volume or disk attributes.
ATTACH	- Attaches a virtual disk file.
AUTOMOUNT	- Enable or disable automatic mounting of basic volumes.
BREAK	- Splitting the mirror set.
CLEAN	- Clear configuration information or all data on the disk.
COMPACT	- Attempts to reduce the physical size of the file.
CONVERT	- Convert disk formats.
CREATE	- Create a volume, partition or virtual disk.
DELETE	- Delete an object.
DETAIL	- View object parameters.
DETACH	- Detaches the virtual disk file.
EXIT	- Shutdown DiskPart.
EXTEND	- Expand volume.
EXPAND	- Increasing the maximum available space on the virtual disk.
FILESYSTEMS	- Displays the current and supported file systems for the volume.
FORMAT	- Formatting a given volume or partition.
GPT	- Assigning attributes to the selected GPT partition.
HELP	- Display a list of commands.
IMPORT	- Import a disk group.
INACTIVE	- Marking the selected section as inactive.
LIST	- Display a list of objects.
MERGE	- Merging a child disk with its parents.
ONLINE	- Transferring an object marked as "offline" to the "online" state.
OFFLINE	- Transferring an object marked as “online” to the “offline” state.
RECOVER	- Update the status of all disks of the selected package. Attempting to rebuild disks of the wrong package and resynchronizing mirrored and RAID5 volumes with outdated plex or parity data.
R.E.M.	- Does not perform any actions. Used to comment scripts.
REMOVE	- Deleting a drive name or mount point.
REPAIR	- Recovering a RAID-5 volume with a failed member.
RESCAN	- Search for disks and volumes on your computer.
RETAIN	- Placing a service partition on a simple volume.
SAN	- Display or set the SAN policy for the currently loaded OS.
SELECT	- Setting focus on an object.
SETID	- Changing the partition type.
SHRINK	- Reduce the size of the selected volume.
UNIQUEID	- Display or set the GUID Partition Table (GPT) code or Master Boot Record (MBR) signature of the disk.

BOOT FLASH DRIVE using the UltraISO program (II method)

The UltraISO program is designed for creating and editing disk images. When creating a bootable flash drive, we will use the built-in functions of this program.

Open the program with administrator rights, as shown in the figure:

Select the required operating system image to create a bootable USB flash drive, for example, the Windows Vista disk image is selected here:

A pop-up window appears where you need to make sure that the removable media, the image file to be recorded and the recording method are correctly specified (it must be set in USB-HDD+ mode) and click the “burn” button

After clicking the "Write" button, a "Hint" window will appear, prompting you to erase all information on the flash drive. Agree!

Then the data will be written to the flash drive...

And finally, after a certain time, the operating system image will be written to a newly created bootable USB flash drive for future installation.

BOOTABLE FLASH DRIVE IS MADE!

NOTE: Do not forget to set the BIOS input/output system to boot the primary device, that is, make sure that the computer boots from removable media - the bootable flash drive you created.

BOOT FLASH DRIVE using Windows7 USB/DVD Download Tool (III method)

The Windows7 USB/DVD Download Tool program created by Microsoft for burning operating system disk images to optical and removable media. When creating a bootable flash drive, we will sequentially follow all the instructions of the program.

First, you need to download this program from the official Microsoft website. Then you need to install the program following the installer's instructions. After installing the program, a shortcut will appear on the desktop, as shown in the figure:

Run it with "Administrator rights", right-click on the shortcut and click on the line "Run as administrator". The program will start, click the "Browse" button and select the operating system image *.ISO

After you have selected the image of the system to be recorded, click “Next”, another window will appear where you will be asked to select the type of media - optical or removable. Since we have a removable storage device - a flash drive, select "USB device"

We select our removable media from the proposed list, i.e. flash drive and press the "Begin copying" button

After clicking the above button, the process of formatting the flash drive will begin...

After some time, the process of writing the disk image data to the flash drive will continue.

We wait some time for the image to be recorded, and eventually we will get 100%, and here we are The bootable flash drive is created!