How to turn a USB PenDrive into a Bootable Device.

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Sunday, February 17, 2013

It is most obvious for all of us to have a DVD or a CD Rom in our system. Sometimes it is necessary to use a pen-drive for actions such as installing an Operating System as some systems does not support DVD Rom. The problem is that, our pen-drive is not a Bootable device like DVD or CD having an OS in it.

The process of converting a USB pen-drive into a Bootable one is very simple than you think. The only thing you need to accomplish this is a pen-drive and a DVD having an Operating System inserted in the DVD Rom. Be sure to format the pen-drive before using it.

Open the command prompt in windows. Type in the following command in the command prompt with the pen-drive inserted in the system and the DVD with the OS software inserted in the system.

The command to make the pen drive Bootable is,

xcopy DVDdriveName:\*.* /s/e/i penDriveLetter:\

Command Used to Turn USB into a Bootable Device
Command to make a pen drive Bootable

The main thing to note here is,

  • f is the DVD drive letter or the CD drive letter.
  • m is the pen-drive letter

Once you have entered the command the system starts to copy all the contents into the Pen-drive.

Warning:
Do not remove the Pen Drive or Eject the DVD while the process is going on.

Once the task has been completed, the command prompt will display a completed message. Do not open the Pen-drive to view the contents. Just eject the Pen Drive from the system. To install the operating system from the device do the following steps.

  • Insert the Device into the system in which you want to install the OS.
  • Press the power button and enter the BIOS settings menu of the system. Each motherboards has a different hot-key to enter into the BIOS settings.
  • Search for the option Boot Priority and Bring the Pen Drive in the first place
  • Save and Restart the system and the OS will boot as it would form a DVD source.

Once the installation completes, change the Boot priority back to your Hard Disk and Format the Pen Drive to use it back as a normal Pen Drive.