To make a Windows 10 bootable USB thumb drive, everywhere I looked says to download Windows 10 to the USB stick. Is there some reason why Win10 cannot be downloaded to a Windows 7 HDD and then copied to a USB thumb drive?
I see mention that you need a 5GB, or 8GB or 16GB USB stick. Which is correct?
I'm about to make my first steps into the world of Windows 10.
Thanks
Hi, you can download the iso file to whatever you want- it's just a file.
You should be able to make a USB HDD bootable too.
What you cannot do if you want a bootable flash drive is simply copy the iso file to it. That makes it just a data disk with a file on it.
More including size of drive:
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10
Related:
Boot from USB Drive on Windows 10 PC
Download Windows 10 ISO File
You should take a look at this excellent tutorial here on Tenforums on how to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10. It will guide you thru all the steps and answer a lot of your questions. Excellent starting point and you can post further questions here for clarification.
Upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7 for Free
One basic precaution- create a current disk image before attempting the upgrade, ensuring you have a way back should things go wrong. E.g. Macrium Reflect (free/paid) + external storage for image files.
There's no guarantee of upgrading succeeding- following that tutorial, disable and preferably uninstall any 3rd party security programs, disconnect unnecessary peripherals, make sure you have at least 30Gb free on C:
You can try manually upgrading using the iso- if you use the iso file you don't need a bootable disk.
Mount the iso file, run setup.exe from the newly created disk.
The latest ISO I have is Ver 1903 x64-only.
- Its ISO is just under 5GB
- It used up just over 5GB when extracted to a USB
Denis
When creating a bootable Windows 10 iso the minimum size flash drive per the Microsoft website is 8 GB.
The iso can be installed on a flash drive to make it bootable or non-bootable.
The bootable iso requires formatting the flash drive.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10
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.
Thanks for all the replies & I'll look at all the provided links.
I thought about downloading Win10 to my Win7 PC's HDD since I don't have an empty flash drive. And then copying to the flash drive when I get spare one.
I plan on doing a fresh install on a new PC build & figured having a copy of Win10 in my hands would get me motivated to build one.
These links are typically useful:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10
Download Windows 10 ISO File
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10
A non-bootabe windows 10 iso can be used for other purposes.
For example, an in place upgrade repair.
But for a clean install it needs to be bootable.
If you are planning to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10 there are other tutorials that are useful.
If you have a program like 7zip installed on your Win 7 machine you can extract the ISO to a folder and run the setup.exe program from there.I thought about downloading Win10 to my Win7 PC's HDD since I don't have an empty flash drive. And then copying to the flash drive when I get spare one.
Caveats:
To do a clean install of Windows 10, ithe installer must be run from a boot drive.
To boot from a USB drive on a UEFI system, the USB drive must be formatted as FAT32.
The largest drive that Windows will format as Fat32 is 32GB. If you want larger, you'd need to use a third-party utility. How to Format a Large Hard Drive With FAT or FAT32
I admit that I have never used a HDD as an Win10 installation medium. I have a number of USB thumb drives lying about. One is so ancient that it's 512 MB.
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