Create Portable Windows 10 USB with Top 3 Ways – Easy, Handy

What can a portable USB with Windows 10 do for you?

Besides storing files, what else can a USB flash drive do? Actually, USB flash drive has another practical function, which is to make a portable operating system by installing Windows system with Windows ISO and system files into the USB flash drive. It allows you to use your personalized Windows anytime, anywhere.

Benefits of creating a portable Windows 10 USB flash drive:

✨ The most obvious benefit is that this portable flash drive can accommodate you to use your personalized settings of the operating system anytime and anywhere. This way your work process will not be restricted and disturbed.

✨ When system crashes, boot failures, corrupted system files or similar issues arise, using this Windows 10 portable flash drive will allow you to successfully boot your computer and rescue your important files.

If you have no idea how to accomplish this task, then you cannot miss the following part. Moving on you can master 3 easy ways to create a portable Windows 10 USB.

How to create portable Windows 10 USB in the top 3 ways

To make Windows 10 USB portable, and facilitate the working process, you can follow the methods provided in the next section. Let’s see how they work.

Way 1. Make Windows 10 USB portable with free AOMEI Backupper

A professional yet free third-party software to make a Windows 10 USB portable is recommended, which is AOMEI Backupper Standard. You don't need to prepare an ISO file in advance, because this software will take care of the bootable media creation process. Here are some of its outstanding features:

✎It enables you to create a bootable DVD/CD or USB that can be used to start a crashed computer of various brands. And the created media is able to boot in both BIOS and UEFI mode.
✎ As an all-in-one backup and restore solution, it allows you to backup file, disk, partition, and backup system to USB drive, external hard drive or network share, cloud, etc. at a daily, weekly, and monthly frequency.
✎ All Windows PC operating systems like Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/Vista/XP are supported (both 32 bit and 64 bit).

Follow the instructions below to create a bootable Windows 10 USB via AOMEI Backupper:

1. Download and install this freeware on your PC.

2. Launch it, click Tools from the left panel and then select Create Bootable Media.

Note: This process will overwrite all the data on the drive. If there are important files on it, you'd better back up USB flash drive in advance to avoid data loss.

3. Select bootable disc type from Linux-based or Windows PE based, and click Next to continue. It is suggested to select Windows PE, which allows you to access full functions.

4. Then select USB Boot Device to create a Windows 10 bootable USB and then click Next to run this process.

☎ Usefulfeaturesyoumayneed:

Θ If you want to restore system to different hardware, you can upgrade to Professional edition to enjoy theUniversal Restore feature.
ΘIf you want to boot a computer over a network, try the PXE boot tool or AOMEI Image Deploy feature. Both of them are available in the advanced edition.
ΘYou can create Windows recovery environment that can be accessed from the Windows boot menu, so you have no need to create bootable device to boot a failed system. (Paid feature).

Way 2. Make Windows 10 USB portable with Rufus

Rufus is a small portable utility for creating bootable USB drives for Windows and Linux, which doesn’t require installation. To create a portable Windows 10 USB drive using Rufus, follow the steps below.

1. Preparations you need to do: download Rufus and a Windows 10 ISO file on your computer, and insert a USB drive.

2. Run Rufus and select the USB drive on which you want to create portable Windows 10 from the Device drop-down menu.

3. Click the SELECT button, navigate to the Windows 10 ISO file on your computer, and then select the ISO file to add it to Rufus.

4. Choose Image option, Partition scheme and Target system based on your need. Or you can leave the other options on the page at their default values.

5. Click the START button at the bottom to begin the process. All that is left is to wait for the creation to complete.

Way 3. Make Windows 10 USB portable with Media Creation Tool

Windows Media Creation Tool can help you create Windows 10 installation USB drive/DVD disc to perform a clean install or fix a faulty PC. Here’s how to use it.

1. Have Media Creation Tool downloaded and installed on your PC. After that, it brings up Microsoft Software License Terms window, click Accept to move to next stage.

2. In the next window, select language and edition of Windows 10. Then click Next.

3. Select the USB flash drive, and click Next.

4. Select the connected blank USB drive from the list, and click Next.

5. Wait for the process to complete. Once it is done, you will have a portable Windows 10 USB in hand.

How to boot Windows 10 from the portable USB

When you want to launch Windows 10 on a different computer using this portable USB, you need to use the USB drive as the host computer's primary boot device.

1. Insert this portable Windows 10 USB into the machine you want to boot from.

2. Press the appropriate key (F2, F12, Delete, or Esc) to access BIOS.

3. After accessing the BIOS window, go to Boot menu and set the USB drive as the first boot option. Press F10 to save changes and boot from it.

Your turn

To create portable Windows 10 USB, both of the solutions can help you make it easily and effortlessly. You can try Rufus, Windows Media Creation Tool, or a more flexible tool AOMEI Backupper to finish the task without any restrictions. For Server users, you can still use the same feature to make Windows Server 2019 legacy boot securely.

As a continuous data protection solution, AOMEI also supports you to clone Windows 11 to another hard drive, and make the cloned one boot up securely. There are other features such as sync, restore and other tools that wait for you to explore.