While most computers already come with a recovery drive, many of us want a clean install using a Windows 10 ISO image.
In this post, we will see how to burn Windows 10 ISO images to a USB drive and create a bootable USB stick for installation purposes. First, you need to download the Windows 10 ISO image file. Please refer to our guide to download ISO image file from Microsoft website. Once you have downloaded the file, we can move on to the next stage of creating a bootable USB drive.
Create a bootable USB device
Once you have the ISO file on your computer, you can proceed to create a bootable USB drive. There are a lot of software that can be used to create a bootable drive, some of them are ABUSB, Rufus, Microsoft Media Creation Tool, WinToFlash and others.
But we will see how to use Rufus and Microsoft’s media creation tool.
Let’s start with Rufus.
Using Rufus:
Rufus is a free tool that can be used to create a bootable USB stick and also offers a portable version so there is no need to install it.
Just download this free utility from the official link, then insert your USB drive and open it. You need to make sure you have a 4 GB flash drive for the 32-bit version of Windows and an 8 GB flash drive for the 64-bit version of Windows.
You should now browse to the location of your USB drive and then select the MBR partition scheme for BIOS or UEFI if it is not already selected. It will make sure that this USB drive is compatible with both BIOS and UEFI based systems. You can leave the other options in the tool at their default values.
Then find the ISO image button under the format options and browse to the location of the ISO file.
Now that you are ready to create your bootable USB drive, click the Start button and wait for it to finish. You need to make sure there is no data on the USB drive or it will be erased when you click the start button. Therefore, if there is data on the USB, you should make a backup before proceeding.
After Rufus completes the process, you will have a bootable Windows 10 USB drive. You can now use this USB drive to install Windows 10 on any of your computers.
Using the media creation tool:
Media Creation Tool is a utility developed by the Microsoft team that allows you to download a copy of an ISO file compatible with your computer and create a bootable USB media drive to install Windows 10 Media Creation Tool.
It is one of the easiest ways to create a bootable USB to install Windows 10.
- First, you need to go to the Windows 10 download page and then click on the Download Now tool to get the Media Creation Tool exe file.
- You’ll download a portable file that can be run independently, open the file, and agree to its terms.
- You should now select the ‘Create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD or ISO file) for another computer’ option and click Next to continue.
- The tool will then ask you to specify the language, edition, and architecture. You can select each of them or use the recommended settings by clicking the checkmark below, then click the Next button to continue.
- On the next page, you will have two options, choose a USB flash drive or an ISO file. Since our goal is to create a bootable USB drive, we’ll choose the first one.
- Now you need to select the USB drive from the list and click on the Next button to continue.
- The tool will then download Windows 10 and create a bootable USB flash drive.
Click the Finish button once the process is complete and your bootable USB has been created.
Categories: How to
Source: HIS Education