How to Make a Bootable USB using CMD or Rufus

March 30, 2020April 22, 2021 Ashish Manandhar

Everyone once in a while has to install a fresh Operating System in their PC or Laptop. Even if you buy a new Pc or Laptop, the operating system may not be the one you preferred. So, one should know how to install a fresh operating system into their PC or Laptop. Those days are gone when you can easily buy a CD/DVD to install an OS into a system. Nowadays, people usually prefer a USB Stick/pendrive for the job. Installing an Operating System with a USB is quite the same process as with CD/DVD. However the process to make it a bootable USB is what many people get confused in.

To make a bootable pendrive, we need to take care of somethings. Bootable pendrive can be created either by using some CMD commands or using a third-party software. In this article, I will be sharing two methods to make a pendrive bootable.

Requirements:

Minimum of 4 GB Pendrive/ USB Drive
OS (Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, etc.) You can download the Windows 10 OS here.
Software Rufus (Download here)
A working Desktop/Laptop.

Table Of Contents Show

Method 1: Making Bootable USB/Pendrive using CMD

Making Bootable USB/Pendrive using CMD is pretty straight forward. You just need to insert a pendrive into the USB port of your laptop/pc and follow the steps:

1. Click on the Start Menu and type command prompt and open it clicking “Run as an Administrator”.

2. Then Type “diskpart” and press enter and then type “list disk”. You’ll see all your disks available.

3. Check the size of the disk to determine the USB drive. And then type “select disk 1” if the disk 1 is the USB drive.

4. Then type “clean” followed by “ create partition primary”.

5. Then type “select partition 1” and press enter.

6. Then type “active” and press enter.

7. Then type “format quick fs=ntfs” (you can use other file systems as well like FAT32).

8. Then type “assign” and press enter and then type “exit”.

You now have a bootable pendrive. All you need to do is copy the operating system files into the pendrive and use it.

Method 2: Making Bootable USB/Pendrive using Rufus.

You require a third party software called “Rufus” for making a bootable USB/Pendrive. Then You can follow these steps.

1. Open Rufus.

2. Select the pen drive from the device list section.

3. In Boot selection, Select “Disk or ISO Image”.

4. Click on SELECT and then choose the ISO file of Windows you have downloaded.

5. Choose the partition scheme according to the partition scheme your disk is based on. There are GPT and MBR partition schemes. [You can convert MBR to GPT and Vice versa]

6. Then select the file system or you can leave the default.