How to make a bootable USB Drive using CMD on Windows 11

This post will show you how to create or make a bootable USB Drive using CMD on Windows 11/10.

There are times when your Windows 11/10 PC is not working properly. Or there might be moments when you would have to boot your PC from an external USB Drive for Windows On the Go or other reasons. At that time, you will need a bootable USB drive. This is so because USB drives are available very easily and nowadays, everyone has one. Every power user has their ways, and their own tools to make a bootable USB Drive. Well, sometimes your method might encounter a bug or error or you might be new to this and finding a way to do this. You are at the right place. This article will discuss the best ways to securely build a bootable USB.

So, before we start enlisting our choices, let’s learn about some common terms related to Booting.

Terms related to Bootable USB

• Bootloader Options: This bootloader is responsible for loading the Operating System. Sometimes, you have a choice of selecting the bootloader when choosing the installation of a specific operating system.
• grub4dos: A bootloader package designed to allow users to select between multiple operating systems installed on a single system.
• syslinux: This is a lightweight bootloader package designed to allow users to select what type of or what operating systems are to be installed.
• QEMU Emulator: QEMU Emulator or Quick Emulator is a hardware virtualization tool that helps the user to test the booting capabilities of a Drive.
• Cluster Size: The contiguous groups of sectors that are assigned by the file system are called as clusters.
• File System: This controls the accessibility of the data. This accessibility makes sure that the data is copied properly.
• Bad Sector: This is a bonus feature that some special bootable USB maker tools provide the users with. Here, the bootable drive is checked if there are any bad sectors or corrupt subpartitions after the creation of a bootable USB.

Prerequisites for creation of a bootable USB

1. First of all, you need an ISO file of the operating system with the bootmgr or the boot manager.
2. Secondly, you will need a USB Drive (Pendrive) with a minimum capacity of 8GB, depending on the size of your ISO.
3. Thirdly, you need to know if your system supports UEFI Booting. Depending on this, you can create a UEFI Capable bootable disk or a Legacy Capable bootable disk.

How to make a bootable USB Drive using CMD on Windows 11/10

This is a great way to make a bootable USB drive. You do not need any extra or third-party software to run to do your task. Here is how to do it.

First of all, insert your USB Drive into the Computer.

Then, open Command Prompt by searching for cmd in the Cortana search box or hit WINKEY+R to launch the Run utility and type cmd and hit Enter.

Now, after a black window pops up, type in-

diskpart

to run the DISKPART utility.

After that, you will see a new black and white window popping up that would say DISKPART>.

Now, type-

list disk

to list all the Storage devices connected to your computer. After you hit Enter, you will see a list of storage devices (including your hard disk) connected to the computer. Identify your disk’s number here. After this, type-

select disk X

where X is the disk number, you just identified and hit Enter.

You must clear the table records and all the visible data on the drive. For that, type-

clean

and hit Enter.

Now, you must recreate a new primary partition of the drive. For that enter this command-

create part pri

and hit Enter.

You just created a new primary partition. Now, you will have to select it. To do so, type-

select part 1

and hit Enter.

You have to format it now to make it visible to normal users. type in-

format fs=ntfs quick

to format it and hit Enter.

If your platform supports UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) replace NTFS with FAT32 in the previous step.

Type in-

active

and hit Enter.

Lastly, type-

exit

and press Enter key to exit the utility.

When you are done preparing your image for the operating system, save it to the root of the USB Storage Device.

TIPS:

1. This post will show you how to Boot from USB Drive within Windows
2. How to create bootable USB drive in Windows 11 using Rufus

Read next: Best free Bootable USB Maker software for Windows PC.