Creating bootable Windows USB drive without formatting the drive If the file system is NTFS, you might get an error while booting from USB. During our test, we noticed that the USB drive must be formatted in the FAT32 file system. IMPORTANT: This guide might not work if your USB drive is in the NTFS file system. In this guide, we will show you how you can use EasyBCD software to prepare a bootable USB without formatting it. I know, most users aren’t aware of the fact that EasyBCD can be used to create bootable USB as well.

The tool you need is the very popular EasyBCD, it’s the same tool that we use to edit boot menu and change various boot settings.

Luckily, there is a free (free for personal use only) tool out there to help you create a bootable Windows 7/8/8.1 USB drive without destroying the data on the USB. While we can always backup data from USB drive to a location on the hard drive, users who have tens of GBs of data on the USB drive and don’t have enough free space on the hard drive might want to know how to prepare a bootable Windows USB drive without having to format the selected USB drive. Popular tools, including Rufus and Microsoft’s own Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool need to format the drive first to make it bootable. In simple words, these tools don’t let you create bootable Windows USB drive without formatting it. That is, your USB drive will be erased before beginning to transfer setup files on to your connected USB drive. When you are preparing bootable USB with the help of one of these tools, you’ll lose all data on the USB flash drive.

Over the last couple of years, we have posted a number of articles covering methods and free tools out there to create bootable USB drive and install Windows from the USB drive or external hard drive.Įven though there are plenty of tools out there to prepare bootable USB without having to open the Command Prompt, all these tools have one downside in common. We here at Into Windows love installing Windows operating system from USB flash drive.

Wintousb bootable usb maker