How to Make a Bootable Flashdisk with Command Prompt – A bootable pendrive is a pendrive that can be used to run programs or applications directly without having to install them first on a computer. One of the uses of a bootable flash drive is to install the Windows operating system easily and quickly.
To create a bootable pendrive, you don’t need to use an additional application, because you can do it using Command Prompt, which is a built-in Windows command line tool. Here are the steps:
- Prepare a pendrive that has a minimum capacity of 8 GB and a Windows 10 ISO file that you can download from Microsoft’s official website.
- Connect the pendrive to a USB port on your computer and make sure it is detected by the system.
- Open Command Prompt as administrator by right-clicking on the icon and selecting Run as administrator.
- Type diskpart and press Enter to open the DiskPart utility which can be used to manage disks and partitions.
- Type list disk and press Enter to see a list of disks connected to your computer. Note the disk number that corresponds to your pendrive. For example, disk 1.
- Type select disk 1 and press Enter to select disk 1 as the operation target. Replace the number 1 with the disk number of your pendrive.
- Type clean and press Enter to delete all data and partitions on your pendrive. Be careful, this step will permanently delete all the contents of your pendrive.
- Type create partition primary and press Enter to create a new primary partition on your pendrive.
Type select partition 1 and press Enter to select the newly created primary partition. - Type active and press Enter to enable the partition to boot.
- Type format fs=ntfs quick and press Enter to format the partition with NTFS file system quickly. If your computer uses UEFI, use format fs=fat32 quick instead.
- Type assign and press Enter to assign a drive letter to the partition. For example, drive E:.
Type exit and press Enter to exit the DiskPart utility.
Now, your pendrive is bootable, but still empty. You need to copy the Windows 10 ISO file onto it in the following way:
- Open File Explorer and go to the location of the Windows 10 ISO file you downloaded earlier.
- Right-click on the ISO file and select Mount to open it as a virtual drive. For example, drive F:.
- Open drive F: and copy all the files and folders it contains to drive E: (your bootable pendrive).
- Once the copying process is complete, safely remove the pendrive from your computer.
Congratulations, you have successfully created a bootable pendrive with Command Prompt. Now, you can use the pendrive to install Windows 10 on another computer by setting the BIOS or UEFI to boot from USB.