Create a boot hdd. Boot disk with multiple operating systems

Question from a user

Hello.

I have external hard USB drive 1500 GB, about half full. Is it possible to make it bootable for installing Windows 10 without formatting or deleting data from it?

Hello.

If you do everything carefully, then yes, the data on it will not be lost and you will be able to install the OS from it.

Below in the article I will show how this can be done using the example of one of my own disks (used to store various software). Please note that if you do some actions differently than shown in my example, you may lose data on the HDD...

STEP 1: connection...

And so, turn on your laptop (PC) and connect your external HDD to a USB port (preferably USB 3.0 - then all operations will go much faster). I also cannot help but recommend disconnecting all other disks and flash drives from the computer’s USB ports (this will help avoid various recording errors...).

STEP 2: create a new Windows partition

Next we need to run disk management(click Win+R, and enter the command diskmgmt.msc into the open line, see screenshot below). This software is built into all latest Windows XP, 7, 8, 10 operating systems.

In Disk Management you should see all drives connected to your computer. We need to find the external drive that we connected to the USB port.

Next, select one of the partitions on this external HDD ( approx. : in most cases, there is one partition on an external drive - and there is nothing to choose from...), right-click on it and select the function compress volume(the bottom line: we will “take” some space from this partition and create a new partition for Windows, where we will write the boot data).

Then, in the settings, specify the size of the new partition (I recommend choosing a figure of 20-30 GB).

Then you will see that a new unmarked black area has appeared on the disk (there is nothing on it yet). Right-click on it and create a simple volume.

Next, indicate file system FAT 32, set the volume label (can be any) and format the partition ( Important! Only this newly created partition is formatted, not the entire disk. Therefore, all data on other partitions of this disk will be intact).

STEP 3: make this section active

Now we need not to forget about one very important thing - to make our new section active. Active partitions are used to host the OS bootloader (if this is not done, then you will almost certainly not be able to boot from it).

By the way, only one partition on one physical hard drive can be active. If you have several hard drives- then each of them can contain only one active chapter.

And so, the easiest way to do this is to simply right-click on the desired partition in disk management and select the function. But, unfortunately, this function often glows gray and is not available...

Alternative option

First you need to run Command Prompt as an administrator. To do this, simply open the task manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc), create a new task through the file menu, and use the command CMD(example below).

1. diskpart ;
2. list disk (you will see a list of connected physical disks);
3. select disk 3 (instead of 3, indicate your disk number on which you created the new partition);
4. list partition (view all partitions on the selected disk);
5. select partition 3 (instead of 3, enter your partition number (the one you created a step earlier)).

Now that we have selected the drive and partition - just use the command active(if everything went well, a message will appear that this section has been marked as active).

By the way, if you go to "My Computer" you will see a blank new disk(example below).

STEP 4: write to Windows 10 OS partition

To get started, we need an ISO image with Windows 10. If you don’t have one, you can create it using the following instructions:

Now let's talk about how to properly burn bootable media.

Option 1

Just copy all files from ISO image and to our new section. This can be done using a regular archiver, the same 7Z ( best archivers: ).

Although the method is convenient, I personally still resort to special ones. utilities (more on this in option 2).

Option 2

Use the program WinSetupFromUSB(more details about it: ). Please note that you need a version no lower than 1.9 (I will show my example in it).

You need to run this utility as an administrator (to do this, just click on executable file right-click and select it, see example below).

1. first you need to click on opening the advanced options window (see arrow-1, Advanced options);
2. enable display of drives connected to USB (see arrow-2);
3. select the section we are specializing in. prepared in the previous steps (guide by size);
4. specify image ISO file with Windows 10 OS;
5. start recording.

Please note that the program should warn you that you have selected an external drive and it is too large. Just agree.

(Important! There should be no warnings about formatting the disk! Just look at the message, it doesn't contain the words format or erase, delete...).

After ~10 minutes, if everything went well, you will see a message that the job is done. So the disk is ready!

STEP 5: Check operation

Basically, if you did everything exactly step by step as shown above, then when you boot your laptop (PC), you only need to enter Boot Menu(boot menu), select an external HDD and begin installing Windows 10 (see example below).

If your disk is not displayed in the boot menu, first of all you need to go to BIOS settings and check whether the ability to boot from USB devices is enabled (the USB Boot parameter should be set to Enabled, see the example below). As a rule, this setting can be found in the BOOT or System Configuration sections.

Note: the instructions are relevant for relatively new computers (laptops) that support UEFI.

That's all for now, additions on the topic would be helpful...

No fluff or feather!

Today in almost any home computer A hard drive is used as the main storage device. The operating system is installed on it. But in order for the PC to be able to load it, it must know on which devices and in what order it is necessary to search for the Master Boot Record (main boot entry). This article will provide a guide to help you make your hard drive bootable.

In order for an operating system or anything to boot from the HDD, it is necessary to perform certain manipulations in the BIOS. You can make the computer always give the hard drive the highest boot priority. It is also possible to download the program you need from the HDD only once. The instructions in the material below will help you cope with this task.

Method 1: Set Boot Priority in BIOS

This function in the BIOS allows you to configure the boot sequence of the OS from storage devices installed in the computer. That is, you only have to put the hard drive first in the list, and the system will always start by default only from it. To learn how to enter BIOS, read the following article.

This manual uses the BIOS from American Megatrends as an example. Generally appearance This set of firmware is similar for all manufacturers, but variations in the names of items and other elements are allowed.

Go to the basic input/output system menu. Go to the tab "Boot". There will be a list of drives from which the computer can boot. The device whose name is above all others will be considered the primary boot drive. To move a device up, select it using the arrow keys and press the keyboard button «+» .

In the window that appears, select the option "OK" and press "Enter". Now your computer will first boot from the HDD, and not from any other device.

Method 2: "Boot Menu"

When you start your computer, you can go to the so-called boot menu. It allows you to select the device from which the operating system will now be loaded. This method making the hard drive bootable is suitable if this action needs to be performed once, and the rest of the time the main device for booting the OS is something else.

When the PC starts, click on the button, which will bring up the boot menu. Most often this "F11", "F12" or "Esc"(usually all the keys that allow you to interact with the computer at the OS loading stage are displayed on the screen along with the logo motherboard). Use the arrows to select the hard drive and click "Enter". Voila, the system will start loading from the HDD.

Conclusion

This article talked about how you can make your hard drive bootable. One of the above methods is designed to install the HDD as the default boot one, and the other is designed for one-time booting from it. We hope that this material helped you in solving the problem at hand.

A bootable USB Flash or HDD drive is convenient because you can avoid using CD/DVD to install the OS and use diagnostic programs such as Memtest, MHDD, Acronis TI.

A “multi-boot” flash drive or HDD is good because you don’t have to format the entire disk for each program, but install everything there once necessary programs and when loading from it, select the one you need through a beautiful menu. In the case of an HDD, it is convenient to create a separate small partition for this.

There are many solutions for flash drives (for example, http://eee-pc.ru/wiki/soft:usb_multiboot), but, as a rule, they do not work with USB HDD. On Habré I only found information about installing Win7 from a USB HDD, but a year ago attempts to reproduce this were unsuccessful. For Windows installations 7 from a flash drive there is MS Win7 DVD Tool, but again it does not work with HDD. So let's create our own multiboot USB HDD using GRUB4DOS.

We will need:

• USB HDD (everything described should also work for flash drives).
• Windows OS (of course, you can do this in the same way from a Linux-based OS, but I don’t currently have the opportunity to check the performance and the presence of pitfalls).
• Motherboard (BIOS) capable of booting from USB drives. If booting from USB is not supported, you can use Plop, more on that below.

UPD: automation of this method: rghost.ru/20467691 or greenflash.su/_fr/7/7487664.7z. The files from the archive (except menu.lst and seven.iso) must be copied to the root of the section (or the paths in Menu.lst must be changed accordingly).

Possible problems and errors

Error 60: File for drive emulation must be in one contiguous disk area

Solution: You need to defragment the image. For example, using the Contig program from Mark Russinovich. Usage: contig.exe g:\ubuntu1.iso in the console.

BIOS does not support booting from USB, freezes, takes a long time to load and other problems associated with booting from a USB HDD

I hope this article helped you understand how to create a multiboot hard drive or flash drives.

There is a more detailed manual on GRUB4DOS (translation into Russian, sometimes crooked) or in README_GRUB4DOS from the archive with GRUB4DOS.

UPD1: will re-upload the script from method 2 of Win7: I made a mistake and posted it old version, it had problems with x64.
UPD1.1: Added automated 3rd method for Win7.

I have long wanted to have a portable one hard drive, which would have a boot partition and a second partition for other information. And today I will explain how to do this from my own experience. As a result we will have portable USB HDD with separate multiboot section. We will look at how to add your components to the disk and create a menu for it.

In this section you will be able to:

1) Install Windows XP SP3 Zver + autoinstall + WPI

2) Installing Windows 7 ALL Version

3) Live CD - Alkid

4) Acronis Utilities

To get started, we need an empty external hard drive; I have a 250 GB Seagate lying around.

On the forum OSZone.net There is a topic called "MultiBoot USB - Multiboot flash drive & Windows XPE/7PE" created by Jekson07 in which you can download a package of utilities in one shell, 17.5 MB in size.

Screenshot:

1. Format the hard drive.

All information from the hard drive will be deleted!

Launch the utility HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, v.2.2.3.

At point Device select your external hard drive (determined by volume letter and size).

File System it is advisable to choose NTFS.

Choose Quick Format and press Start.

Formatting will begin.

2. Install the GRUB bootloader.

Launch the utility Grub4Dos Installer 1.1.

IN Device Name choose Disk, in the window we find our disk (look carefully at the size, in theory it should be the last one).

We don’t touch anything else, just press Install.

When finished a message will appear The MBR/BS has been successfully installed, meaning everything went as planned.

3. Divide the disk.

We launch a program to partition the disk, for example, Acronis Disk Director.

Find your portable drive, select it and select “split”.

Let's leave, for example, 30 GB for the first disk.

The second will have about 200 GB.

Click on the finish flag to apply the changes.

4. Zver DVD.

Download ZverDVD, which can be easily found via .

We mount it into the program Daemon Tools Lite any version.

Launch the utility WinSetupFromUSB 1.0 b7.

In the top window, select our portable disk on which to save installation disk beast.

Check the box next to Windows 2000/XP and select our Daemon Tools virtual disk in which our installation disk is mounted ZverDVD and click GO.

In order to be able to install ZverDVD V automatic mode, need to

a) open the file from our portable disk j:\WINSETUP\XPpSP3.ISO in the UltraISO program. And add the SETUPLD1.BIN file to the I386 folder in the image, which can be taken here j:\WINSETUP\XPpSP3\I386\SETUPLD1.BIN.

b) edit menu.lst, see below

For WPI to work and normal driver installation, you need to copy the OEMDRV and WPI folders, as well as the WIN51 file (marker) from the j:\WINSETUP\XPpSP3\ folder to the root of the j:\ drive.

5. Windows 7.

I tried it with the 18 in 1 assembly found on the Internet, which includes all modifications of the seven for x86 and x64.

Also using WinSetupFromUSB 1.0 b7 Check the box Vista\7\Server and select the virtual disk into which you mounted the Win7 assembly. And click GO.

Once completed, a message will appear.

6. Alkid CD.

I downloaded version 2011.05 in the image of which I had to change the name of the folder from A386 to I386 (UltraISO utility) so that I could upload it to our portable disk using the same utility WinSetupFromUSB 1.0 b7.

Having launched it, now you need to select the third item UBCD4WIN/WinBuilder/BartPE, select the virtual disk into which the modified Alkid CD image was mounted.

Click GO.

The minint and programs folders will appear on our disk.

7. Required files.

We launch the utility downloaded from OSZone.net and select the item

5) "Copying files and utilities."

8. Acronis.

Installation is simple, if you have an image with Acronis utilities, then replace the dummy file with it j:/boot/Acronis.iso

9. Ubuntu.

Download the image from the developers website and upload the image ubuntu-11.04-desktop-i386.is o to a folder j:/linux/.

From this image you need to extract two files initrd.lz and vmlinuz, which are located in the casper folder of the image.

And put them in a folder j:/linux/.

Edit the menu.lst file (at the bottom of the article).

10. Windows Kolhoz Edition

Now, Windows builds have appeared on the Internet that work from removable drives.

After downloading the distribution, you can install it on our portable disk, like a regular system.

11. Disc menu.

Open the file on the portable disk j:/menu.lst in notepad.

I'm attaching my skin HDDSkin for the menu that needs to be copied to the j:\boot\ folder is shown in the screenshot:

Timeout 30 //time allotted for a simple menu, i.e. After 30 seconds, the default item will start. gfxmenu /boot/Hddskin //skin menu, I have already substituted my skin. default 0 //default item number. //Continue booting the computer title Booting from the hard drive find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /bootmgr || find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /ntldr map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) map --hook rootnoverify (hd0) chainloader (hd0)+1 //Boot Windows Kolhoz Edition title Starting Windows USB HDD rootnoverify (hd0) chainloader (hd0,0)/ntldr //Autoinstall ZVER DVD title Microsoft installation Windows XP SP3 Zver Edition Auto root (hd0,0) map --mem /WINSETUP/XPpSP3.ISO (0xff) map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) map --hook root (0xff) chainloader /I386 /SETUPLD1.BIN //Manual installation ZVER DVD title Installation Microsoft Windows XP SP3 Zver Edition root (hd0,0) map --mem /WINSETUP/XPpSP3.ISO (0xff) map (hd0) (hd1) map (hd1) (hd0) map --hook root (0xff) chainloader /I386/SETUPLDR .BIN //Installing Windows 7 title Installing Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 18 in 1 map --unmap=0:0xff map --unhook root (hd0,0) chainloader /bootmgr // Ubuntu title Ubuntu 11.04 (LiveCD) kernel /linux/ vmlinuz iso-scan/filename=/linux/ubuntu-11.04-desktop-i386.iso boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz locale=ru_RU splash -- initrd /linux/initrd.lz // Alkid Live title Launching Alkid Live CD map --unmap=0:0xff map --unhook root (hd0,0) chainloader /minint/setupldr.bin title Running Alkid Live CD (without drivers) map --unmap=0:0xff map --unhook root ( hd0,0) chainloader /minint/Setuplns.bin //Call additional menu title Additional utilities >>> configfile /boot/menu_2.lst title Loading Plop Boot Manager ls /usbdrive.tag || find --set-root --ignore-cd /usbdrive.tag kernel /plpbt.bin title Booting from CD/DVD-ROM cdrom --init map --hook chainloader (cd0) title Booting from floppy disk rootnoverify (fd0) chainloader ( fd0)+1 title Restarting the computer reboot title Shutting down the computer halt

As if installing an OS is not something complicated, and my opinion is that it is enough to be friends with the computer and have two more hands in addition to your head - one right and the other left. To install the OS on your computer, you need a boot disk or bootable USB flash drive.

But what to do if there is neither one nor the other, it doesn’t work optical drive, or do you have a netbook? After thinking a little, I remembered that I have an external USB pocket for an HDD and a free old HDD 2.5\’\’ too. In general, if you have a pocket hard drive, you can make it bootable.

There are utilities for this purpose that can be used to do this, but I decided to use standard means Windows.

There are a lot of descriptions and videos on the Internet, but, unfortunately, there is one problematic point that the authors for some reason omit. Well, okay, I'll start in order.

Before working with a disk, be sure to transfer and save the necessary information from this disk to another medium.

I will carry out all settings as standard using Windows 8.1. There may be some differences from previous Windows releases, but if there are, they are not significant.

First of all, I want to note that making an external HDD bootable is much more convenient. I divided the disk into two partitions, one contains the Windows distribution, the other partition is for my needs.

1. We connect the USB pocket and go to Disk Management.

Attention! All data on the disk will be destroyed!

If you have Windows 8 installed on your PC,1 right-click: Start/Disk Management;

If Windows is earlier versions, open the Computer Management console: Start / Control Panel / Administrative Tools / Computer Management / expand Storage Devices / left click Disk Management.

See screenshot:

2. Select an external HDD drive. Be extremely careful; if you select another disk by mistake, all information will be destroyed.

In my case, this is Disk 1. As you can see in the screenshot, the disk is divided into two volumes (partitions):

3. Delete disk partitions:

4. Create new disk partitions. One for the distribution, the second will remain for your needs:

Right-click on the free field of the disk, in context menu select a team Create a simple volume:

5. In the Create Simple Volume Wizard window that appears, click the button Next:

Specify the volume size as 4404 megabytes and click Next. Please note that the size is indicated in megabytes. And since 1 gigabyte is equal to 1024 megabytes, then we get 1024×4.3 = 4403.2 megabytes for the distribution partition (mine weighs 4.18 GB, for example);

In this dialog, you need to format the new partition (FAT 32), click Next then Ready:

6. After this, you need to make the created partition active (don’t forget, because the computer will boot from this partition), to do this:

Right click the mouse and select the command in the context menu Make the section active.

We respond to the confirmation request YES.

The external HDD looks like this:

7. In the same order, we format the second partition on the disk, preferably in NTFS, but do not make it active.

Copying Windows to the active partition of an external HDD

Copying a Windows distribution to a bootable external HDD is quite simple and easy.

From boot DVD:

Open the installation DVD in Explorer, select all folders and files, and copy to the active partition of the external HDD;

From the ISO image:

By and large, an ISO image is a kind of archive. So you can open it using any archiver. You can also open the ISO image via Total Commander or Daemon Tools. Well, if you have Windows 8 or 8.1 installed on your PC, then open it with Explorer. Select all folders and files and copy them to the active partition of the external HDD;

That's it, your external HDD can act as bootable media. Just reboot and set the boot priority to USB HDD in the BIOS (depending on the BIOS type).

• When you turn on the laptop, press F2 to enter the BIOS;
• Go to the tab Boot;
• IN Boot Priority order install USB HDD;
• Click F10 and then OK.

If that doesn't work, check out this article.

Save the changes and proceed to install Windows.

As we can see from the text, preparing an external HDD for installing Windows is quite simple. And my description will not be complete if I do not talk about one problem that for some reason is rarely written about on the Internet.

Making the hard drive partition active

When I divided the hard drive into two volumes, for some reason unknown to me, not a single partition of the disk could be made active. This function was not available in the context menu.

The active partition is the partition from which the computer boots.

There are two ways to make a section active:

1. Using the Computer Management console. We have already considered this method, but, unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the Make partition active command may not be available. The solution to this problem is also not difficult. Remember how to prepare bootable USB flash drive from the Command Line.
2. Using the Command Line, through the utility diskpart. The second method is a little more complicated, but more effective. You just need to do all the operations carefully and slowly.

Setting the active partition using the command line

1. Connect an external USB HDD;

2. Click Start/All Programs/Accessories/ Command line . Right-click and select Run as administrator.

3. In the window that opens, write the command diskpart and press the button Enter. An invitation line to work with the utility will appear – DISKPART>;

4. Enter the command list disk and press the button Enter. You will see all the disks installed on your computer;

5. We select the disk with which we will work. To do this, enter the command select disk 0, where “0” is the disk number in the list, i.e. for my external drive there will be a team select disk 1. Click the button Enter, the message Disk 1 selected will appear;

6. Next, you need to find all partitions on the selected disk. Enter the command list partition and press the button Enter.

7. We select the section we will work with. Enter the command select partition 1, where 1 is the section number in the list, i.e. for the section that we make active. Click Enter, a message will appear Section 1 selected.

8. Mark the selected partition as active, to do this, enter the command active. Click the button Enter, a message will appear DiskPart: Partition marked as active.

That's it. I wish you good luck.