• Jul 04, 2017  Install Windows 10 on External Hard Drive It’s intended for use with USB sticks, but it will work for other external drives too. In this tutorial you will.
  • The external hard drive should have only one MBR partition (you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to create an MBR partition). Attach your external hard drive to your PC using the USB cable. Right-click on the external hard drive in File Explorer and select Format. Select file system to be NTFS and choose Quick Format in the formatting dialog.
  • This method will allow you to boot and install Windows directly from the hard drive. This guide involves plugging the hard drive into another working computer, preparing the hard drive, placing it back in the system, and installing Windows as usual. This was tested with Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. The guide for Windows 7 is exactly the same.

Clean Install Windows Directly from the Hard Disk Drive
You want to install Windows but you can’t use a DVD or an USB for whatever reason?
This tutorial will show you a method that will allow you to boot and install Windows directly from the hard disk drive (HDD).
Note: This guide only works for Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 OS's.
Part 1: Preparing the HDD
• If there is no Windows OS currently installed on the HDD then connect the HDD to a another working computer (with Windows installed)
• Create a 4GB primary partition.
• Format the 4GB partition with NTFS file system.
• Assign a drive letter to that new partition.
• Copy the content of the Windows 7 Setup DVD to the 4GB partition.

With this software, you can easily create a portable Windows on a USB drive, even you don't have an enterprise version of Windows. Tutorial to install Windows 10 onto an external hard drive as portable Windows 10 with WinToUSB. Connect the USB drive to the computer, then run WinToUSB.


Part 2: Making the HDD Bootable
1. Open the Command Prompt as a Administrator, type cmd.exe into the Start Menu search box, right click on cmd.exe, then select “Run as administrator”.
2. Enter the commands below, while replacing zero (0) number with your HDD assigned disk number and replace the X letter with the drive letter assigned to the partition you have created earlier on your HDD.


(See picture for example)
3. Within the Command Prompt type the command below:


Replace the X: drive letter with the drive letter of the CD/DVD-ROM optical drive where the Windows Setup DVD is inserted.
Replace the Y: drive letter with the drive letter of the 4GB partition you have created.


Part 3: Booting and installing Windows
Make sure that the BIOS is configured to boot from the hard disk drive (HDD).
If you did everything correctly, you should see “Windows is loading files ..” and a progress bar.
You can now install Windows as usual.
Part 4: Delete the 4GB partition
You have to quickly edit the boot menu once Windows is installed.


1. In Windows, press the keys;

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2. Type msconfig into Run dialog box that has opened and click on OK;
3. Click on the Boot tab from System Configuration at the top;
4. Click 'Windows Setup (windows)', and click on the Delete button;
5. Click OK;

Drive


6. Click on 'Exit without restart';
If the 4GB partition is designated as a System partition then in this situation you cannot delete that 4GB partition.
Follow the guide below to delete the 4GB partition if you were to find yourself in a such situation.
Note: Only follow the guide below if the 4GB partition is designated as a System partition.
1. Mark the C: partition as an active partition from the Disk Management Utility;
2. Open the Command Prompt as a Administrator and type:


3. Restart your computer;

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Note: If the Bcdboot command is missing from Windows Vista, the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit contains the Bcdboot.exe tool. The Bcdboot.exe file is included at following locations: 'C:Program Files (x86)Windows Kits8.1Assessment and Deployment KitDeployment Toolsamd64BCDBoot' directory.
Note: Make sure to change the Command Prompt directory path to Bcdboot.exe file stored directory path with the Cd command.
And lastly, delete the 4GB partition this will free up 4GB which you can extend to the C: partition with the MiniTool Partition Wizard Home Edition.


1. Within MiniTool Partition Wizard select the 4GB partition;

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2. From the left pane click on “Delete Partition”;
3. Click on the OK button and click on Apply from the toolbar;
4. Within MiniTool Partition Wizard select the C: partition and click on 'Move/Resize' to enter the next interface;
5. Increase the C: partition size by dragging the right arrow of the scroll bar to the right or directly entering accurate values in the text boxes below;
After
6. After you're done with the settings, click on the 'OK' button;
7. Click on Apply in the toolbar;
8. Click on the “Restart Now” button on the Notice dialog box;


It so happened this week that my old favorite USB 3.0 pendrive stopped working. I have used it to install Windows a zillion times. I have USB 2.0 pendrives but they are very slow when copying or reading files. So I decided to use my external hard drive as the installation media to install Windows 10 on my new laptop. Here are the steps I took to successfully install Windows 10 using an external hard drive:

Note: Before beginning, make sure that you have downloaded Windows 10 ISO image from Microsoft servers and have installed 7-Zip in your PC. The external hard drive should have only one MBR partition (you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to create an MBR partition).

  1. Attach your external hard drive to your PC using the USB cable.
  2. Right-click on the external hard drive in File Explorer and select Format. Select file system to be NTFS and choose Quick Format in the formatting dialog.
  3. Right-click on the Windows 10 ISO image file, select 7-ZipOpen Archive. Then extract all the files from the ISO to the external hard drive.
  4. Open an elevated command prompt. Assuming F: is the drive letter for your external hard drive, give the following commands:
  5. Now we have to use the diskpart tool to make the partition on external hard drive bootable. For this, in the elevated command prompt we give these commands:

    Assuming that “list disk” displays the external hard drive as the disk no. 1 and the “list partition” displays the partition no. 1 for the first partition in the external hard drive.

  6. Now you can reboot your PC and when press F12 to select a boot media when the PC is about to start. Select the “Mass Storage Media” from the list to start the Windows 10 installation.

If your computer is not able to boot using the external hard drive, then try turning off the PC and the external hard drive both first and then power them up at the same time. This is because some portable hard drives stop spinning when Windows is rebooted.

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