How to create a bootable USB with Windows 10?

Daniel Terrasa

6 minutes

usb windows 10

Perform a "clean" installation of the operating system, solve various problems, restore a PC... There is a very simple and effective way to carry out these and many other operations. The idea is to Create a bootable USB with Windows 10In this post we show you how to do it.

The great advantage that the use of this type of device offers us (also known as «Bootable USB») is the power install Windows 10 directly, without having to resort to an installation disk.

Before we start explaining what to do, we need to make sure that we have everything we need to execute this operation. Namely:

  • Un PC with Windows, Internet connection and administrator permissions.
  • An usb drive with a minimum capacity of 8 GB.
  • Windows 10 Image (ISO), which can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.
  • Media creation tool (Media Creation Tool), which we can also get through Microsoft.

Create a bootable USB with Windows 10 step by step

Once we have verified that we have everything, we are going to dive into the procedure of creating a bootable USB with Windows 10. These are the steps to follow:

Step 1: Download the Media Creation Tool

windows media creation tool

The first thing we have to do is download this free tool from the Microsoft official website. The Media Creation Tool (Media Creation Tool) This is the one that will allow us to download Windows 10 and prepare the bootable USB.

What you need to do is go to the Download Windows 10 option, click on the button «Download the tool now» and finally save the executable file («MediaCreationTool.exe«) on our PC.

Step 2: Prepare the USB drive

USB

Now we have to focus on the USB drive, that as we have said, It must have adequate storage capacity and (this is important) be completely empty.If there are any files saved on the flash drive, we will lose them during the process. After this, you have to proceed like this:

  1. To begin with, we connect the USB to the PC.
  2. Then we open the "File Browser" to verify that the computer recognizes it.
  3. We right click on the USB drive.
  4. In the options that appear, we select "Format". There we have to choose the following format options:
    • File system: FAT32.
    • Allocation Unit Size: Default.
    • Volume label: We can assign the name that seems best to us.
  5. To finish, we click on "Start" and we wait for the formatting to complete.

Step 3: Run the Media Creation Tool (and select the target USB)

usb boot windows 10

Next, we need to create the bootable USB using the executable file we downloaded in step 1:

  1. First, we open the executable file «MediaCreationTool.exe» and we accept Microsoft's terms and conditions.
  2. In the section "What do you want to do?", we select «Create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) for another PC» and we click "Next".
  3. Then we must configure the following options:
    • Language: For example, Spanish.
    • Edition: Windows 10.
    • Architecture: 64-bit, 32-bit, or both.
  4. Once this is done, we click on "Next".
  5. On the next screen, where we are asked "Choose which medium to use", we select "USB flash drive."
  6. We click on "Next" and We select the USB drive that we connected in step 2.
  7. To conclude, we click on "Following" so that the tool starts downloading Windows 10 and copying the necessary files to the USB.

This process may take more or less time depending on the speed of our Internet connection.

Step 4: Check the bootable USB

uefi/bios

At this point, everything is done, but we still need to verify that our bootable USB works correctly. Here's how we can perform this check:

  1. We restart the PC and we access the BIOS or UEFI (there are several ways to do this).
  2. After We changed the boot order, so that USB appears as the first option.
  3. Finally, we save the changes and restart the computer.

Rufus: The Alternative Tool

Rufus Officer

There is a alternative way to create a bootable USB for Windows 10. A fairly effective method that many users around the world use: the software Rufus. We explain how to use this option:

  1. First we have to download Rufus from its official website.
  2. Then we open the program.
  3. Then we connect the USB to our PC.
  4. We select the unit in the field "Device".
  5. Then we will «Boot Selection» and click on “Select”, choosing the Windows 10 ISO file that we previously downloaded (see step 1 of the previous method).
  6. At this point, we configure the options that appear on the screen as follows:
    • Partition scheme: GPT (for UEFI) or MBR (for BIOS).
    • File System: FAT32.
  7. To finish, we click on "Begin", starting the process. When Rufus has completed its task, we will have our bootable USB ready to install Windows 10.

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