Seagate Free Agent

I have a Seagate Free Agent 500gb, can it be used as a Flash Drive to burn the ISO to? the agent has been wiped clean of every thing.

An ISO image file is a snapshot of the data and layout of a CD or DVD, ISO image files are widely used for storing CD content. The most common use of an image file is to write it to a blank CD-R or DVD-R, resulting in an identical copy of the original disc including file name and volume label information.

MrHudson said:

I have a Seagate Free Agent 500gb, can it be used as a Flash Drive to burn the ISO to? the agent has been wiped clean of every thing.

I'm not quite sure what your asking. A drive is a drive is a drive.....no matter what it looks like. You don't need a drive to burn a ISO. A drive is used to house (store) the ISO.

If your asking if you want to use the ISO on the free agent drive to boot from....then that's a no. You need a thumb drive or DVD and make it a bootable device.

Using the tool to create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) to install Windows 10 on a different PC (click to show more or less information)Follow these steps to create installation media (USB flash drive or DVD) you can use to install a new copy of Windows 10, perform a clean installation, or reinstall Windows 10.
Before you download the tool make sure you have:

• An internet connection (internet service provider fees may apply).
• Sufficient data storage available on a computer, USB or external drive for the download.
• A blank USB flash drive with at least 8GB of space or blank DVD (and DVD burner) if you want to create media. We recommend using a blank USB or blank DVD, because any content on it will be deleted.
• When burning a DVD from an ISO file, if you are told the disc image file is too large you will need to use Dual Layer (DL) DVD Media.

Yes, that is what I wanted to know. my HP crashed and there is no media recovery to reset it back to factory default. this what it comes up with and none of them work.

[QUOTE=topgundcp;1202953]The answer is yes. An ISO file is just a compressed file, just like zip or rar . You can make use of this 500GB bootable. You can create a partition, format with FAT32 and large enough to extract the content of the ISO.
Next, use 7-zip/winzip/winrar to extract the content to this partition (don't need any burn software or Rufus). if booted with MBR, mark the partition to boot from "Active", the rest of the disk can be use to store backup image/data/pictures etc...

Here's an example of one of my disk:


Partition 1 is where I store data,
Partition 2 contains Windows 10 Installation disk,
partition 3 contains Macrium Rescue disk

So if I want to boot up Windows Installation, I would mark partition 2 as "Active"
To boot Macrium, mark partition 3 as "Active"

For GPT disk type, no need to mark a partition as "Active" to boot. Just select from the boot menu which one you want to boot from.[/QU
Not sure what your saying, sorry I am back woods city country boy. I drive by land marks not street signs.
I want to use it to install windows on my HP that crapped out when It said to restart. it came up with that Advanced Option and none of them work. I saved the download of (( Using the tool to create installation media (USB flash drive, DVD, or ISO file) to install Windows 10 on a different PC )), don't know where go next.

topgundcp said:

@MrHudson
How old is your PC ? If recently bought, then the BIOS is used UEFI firmware which you can choose to install Windows with the old MBR style or GPT style. The latter is mostly used if you buy a new PC.

Correct.

I also edited my previous post, stating that you also need to set the Segate to be the first boot device in the BIOS.

I bought in Feb 9 2017. so its not old. HP support says it was activated in Oct 2015. in BIOS under System Information it shows a Born On Date of Feb 9th 2017. which is the day I bought it and first turned it on. yesterday in HP Support icon it had the exclamation ! showing, I clicked on it, comes up to restart. I restarted and it went into Advanced Option. I kept trying to force the hard reset back to factory default and it doesn't do that.

MrHudson said:

I have a Seagate Free Agent 500gb, can it be used as a Flash Drive to burn the ISO to? the agent has been wiped clean of every thing.

@topgundcp Here is OP original first post question i don't see OP asking about making external drive bootable.