Sep 23, 2019  A broken Mac computer with Mac OS X. A trial copy of the TransMac software. One high quality USB flash drive with 16GB of storage. A copy of Apple’s macOS (DMG file). Now that you have all the necessary ingredients, you’re ready to make a Mac OS X bootable USB using the DMG file of the operating system with the steps below. How do I create a bootable external hard drive from an ISO? Make a Bootable External Hard Drive and Install Windows 7/8. Step 1: Format the Drive. Just place the flash drive in the USB port of your computer. Step 2: Mount The Windows 8 ISO Image Into A Virtual Drive. Step 3: Make The External Hard Disk Bootable. Jul 07, 2020  A broken Mac computer with Mac OS X or macOS (version 10.12 or later). A trial copy of the TransMac software. One high quality USB flash drive with 16GB of storage. A copy of Apple’s macOS (DMG file). Create macOS bootable USB installation media. To create a bootable USB drive. Jun 11, 2015  Mac Secret Trick - How to Clone Mac Hard Drive with Disk Utility HDD SDD MacBook Pro iMac 2010-2019 - Duration: 10:09. Gunner Tierno x Yeezy God 355,875 views 10:09.

1. Create Mac Bootable Drive
2. Make Bootable External Hdd
3. Boot Mac To External Drive
4. Making An External Drive Bootable Mac Os Windows 10
5. Making An External Drive Bootable Mac Os Download

Summary :

What are the advantages of making external hard drive bootable? The first one is that you can use a bootable external hard drive to boot the unbootable computer. The second one is that when you don't want to use the system that comes with the computer, you can use bootable drive to boot the computer.

Why Do You Need to Make External Hard Drive Bootable Windows 10?

There are a number of important reasons for users to make external hard drive bootable Windows 10. I have listed some reasons below.

• When your Windows 10 fails to boot due to system corruption, hard drive failure, or a virus attack, you can easily boot your computer using the Windows 10 bootable external hard drive you created earlier to avoid being unable to use your computer at important times.
• If you need to use a computer, but the computer is not around, then you can use the bootable drive to start other computers and use your own operating system anytime, anywhere.

How to Make External Hard Drive Bootable Windows 10?

How to make a Windows 10 bootable external drive? There are four methods for you. And Windows provides two built-in features to make a bootable external hard drive. Another two solutions, you need to download MiniTool software to make external hard drive bootable Windows 10.

Make External Hard Drive Bootable Windows 10 with Windows To Go

Most people know that external hard drive bootable Windows 10 can be created by Windows To Go function that comes with Windows 10. Windows To Go can be used to copy all the system related files to the external hard drive so as to make it bootable. Therefore, you can plug the USB drive into your computer and start the computer from the external hard drive.

However, there are several limitations for users to use this way to make external hard drive bootable Windows 10:

• First, to use Windows To Go, your Windows 10 must be Enterprise or Education or Professional version. (In addition, Windows 8/8.1 Enterprise Edition has this feature, and other versions or operating systems do not have Windows To Go feature.)
• Second, Windows To Go can only be run when the USB drive is certified and the storage space of it must be at least 32GB. If the USB drive does not have enough space or is not certified, Windows To Go cannot be used to create Windows bootable USB drive.

Then how to use Windows To Go to make Windows 10 bootable USB drive? The method is below.

Step 1：You need to download Windows 10 ISO file in your computer and insert a larger than 32GB certified USB drive into the computer.

Step 2: Type control panel in the search box at first and click Control Panel to continue.

Step 3: You can set view by Small icons or enter Windows To Go in the right top search box, and click Windows To Go to continue.

Step 4: Choose the drive you want to use in Create a Windows To Go workspace window. Then click on it and click Next to continue.

Step 5: Click Add search location to search for the Windows 10 ISO file and choose the Windows 10 ISO image to continue.

Create Mac Bootable Drive

Step 6: Choose whether to set a BitLocker password. If you want to set a password, then enter your password, but you need to type your password to unlock the drive in the future. If not, click Skip to continue.

Step 7: All the data on the USB drive will be deleted because the USB drive will be reformatted. Remember to back up important files before click Create.

Step 8: After finishing, select Yes or No to boot the computer from the new created Windows 10 bootable USB drive or not. If you want to test whether the USB drive is bootable, choose Yes and click Save and restart. If not, select No and click Save and close.

After these operations, you can make USB drive bootable Windows 10. But there are limitations that don’t suit everybody. Therefore, I highly recommend you try the second method to make external hard drive bootable Windows 10.

Use MiniTool ShadowMaker to Make External Hard Drive Bootable Windows 10

MiniTool ShadowMaker is a piece of powerful and effective software to back up the operating system, disk and partitions, files and folders. What’s more, you can use it to sync files and folders quickly and safely. It can also clone disk making external hard drive bootable Windows 10. So why don’t you just download it and have a try?

Step 1: Please launch MiniTool ShadowMaker first, then choose Local or Remote to get the main interface by clicking Connect.

Step 2: Please click Clone Disk on the Tools page to continue.

Step 3: Please click Source to choose the clone source, then choose system disk and click Finish to continue.

Step 4: Please click Destination to select the external hard disk to save the copy and click Finish to continue.

Step 5: After you have selected the source disk and the target disk, please click OK to continue.

Step 6: Please read the warning and click Yes.

Step 7: Please read the information in the pop-up window carefully: If both disks are connected to the computer, one will be marked as offline. Then click Yes and Finish to finish cloning disk.

After you have read the steps above, you can clearly draw that this method is much easier and more convenient than the first method. Besides, you can transfer OS from one computer to another as long as they are in the same LAN.

Make External Hard Drive Bootable Windows 10 with Windows Command Prompt

If you are good at using Command Prompt, then you can also use Command Prompt to make external hard drive bootable Windows 10. But you also need to pay attention not to enter wrong command in case that you lose data or damage system files.

There are two things you need to do to make external hard drive bootable Windows 10.

Format external hard drive

In order to make external hard drive bootable Windows 10, you need to format external hard drive at first.

Step 1: Insert the external hard drive into your computer. Type cmd in the search box and right-click Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator to continue.

Step 2: You need to format the external hard drive first. Then type the following instructions one by one, and remember to press Enter every time after you typed instruction.

Diskpart > list disk > select disk n (n represents the drive letter of external hard drive) > clean > create partition primary > format fs=ntfs quick > assign letter=H (you can also choose other letter to assign primary partition) > exit

Copy files from a DVD to bootable USB using CMD

Above you have assigned the letter H to the external hard drive, and you have inserted a DVD inside the DVD drive to copy data from it to create a bootable USB drive. By default, the active directory of the Command Prompt's administrative permissions is located at C:WindowsSystem32>, so you need to set the DVD (G) as active directory using CMD.

Make Bootable External Hdd

Step 1: Type G and press Enter in Command Prompt window at first, then enter cd boot and press Enter. (If the drive letter of the mounted DVD drive in the File Explorer is not G, you can change it.)

Step 2: Enter bootsect /nt60 H and press Enter. Then type exit and press Enter to close Command Prompt.

As you can see, this method is too troublesome. And if you enter the wrong instructions, your computer could get in trouble. You may even lose your data, but you can use third-party software to recover data.

Use MiniTool Partition Wizard to Make External Hard Drive Bootable Windows 10

MiniTool Partition Wizard is also a piece of efficient software for you to make external hard drive bootable Windows 10. Besides, you can convert MBR disk to GPT disk and migrate OS to SSD/HD. So come to download MiniTool Partition Wizard and have a try.

Now follow the following steps and make external hard drive bootable Windows 10.

Step 1. Please download MiniTool Partition Wizard and launch it to open its main interface to continue.

Step 2. There are two options you can choose.

Option A: Select the disk which has OS installed and right-click it, then click Copy to continue.

Option B: Please click on the Copy Disk Wizard on the left action panel and click Next to continue.

Step 3. Please choose the external hard as the target disk, and click Next, then click Yes to continue.

Step 4. Please choose copy options and click Next to continue.

Step 5. Please read the notification on the interface and know how to use the external hard disk to boot the computer and then click Finish to continue.

Step 6. Please click Apply to copy the operating system to the external hard disk.

Step 7. Please click Yes, then click Restart Now to copy system files to the external hard drive. After that, you can use your external hard disk to boot the computer.

This method is also much more convenient than using Windows built features. So you can also use this method to make external hard drive bootable Windows 10.

Bottom Line

This article has introduced four solutions to make external hard drive bootable, which offers you different choices. But using Windows 10 built-in features not only has several limitations but also may cause data loss and operating system damaged. Using third-party software is safer and can save a lot of time for you. In addition, there are plenty of useful functions with MiniTool ShadowMaker and MiniTool Partition Wizard.

If you have any better advice or confusion, please leave comments below or send an email to [email protected].

Make External Hard Drive Bootable Windows 10 FAQ

1. Launch MiniTool ShadowMaker, then click Connect.
2. Click Clone Disk on the Tools page, then choose the system disk as the source and choose the external hard disk as the destination.
3. Click OK and Yes to begin making an external hard drive bootable.
4. Click Yes and Finish.

Looking for a way to install and run OS X on an external hard drive? This can be useful for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, it allows you to run another copy of OS X without needing any additional Mac computer.

Also, since you can run a full copy of OS X on the external drive, it can be used for troubleshooting purposes on other Macs or it can be as a kind of virtual OS X. I’ve already written about how you can install OS X in VMware Fusion, but that takes up space on your Mac. Using an external drive, you can save space on your Mac, though it might be a bit slower if you are using USB 2.0.

In this article, I’ll walk you through the requirements and steps to install OS X onto an external hard drive.

Format External Hard Disk

The first thing you’re going to need to do is format the external hard drive properly. The file format has to be Mac OS X Journaled and you have to use the GUID partition map. To do this, open Disk Utility and connect the drive to your Mac.

Under External in the left hand menu, click on your external hard drive and then click on the Erase button. Make sure you backup any data before you erase the drive. When you click Erase, a dialog will pop up where you can configure some options.

Give your drive a name, choose OS X Extended (Journaled) for Format and GUID Partition Map for Scheme. It should only take a minute or two for the drive to be erased and reformatted. Now your drive is ready for OS X.

Install OS X

There are two ways you can install OS X on to your external hard disk: by reinstalling OS X from the OS X Utilities repair screen or by downloading OS X from the App Store and running the installer. I’ll show you both methods in case one isn’t working for you.

The easiest way is to download OS X from the App Store. Once you open the App Store, you’ll see a link on the right for the latest version of OS X (El Capitan as of this writing).

Boot Mac To External Drive

Go ahead and click the Download button to start downloading the installer. Note that if you already have that version of OS X installed, you’ll see a popup message appear asking if you still want to continue or not. Just click Continue.

Once it has been downloaded, just double-click the installer, which will be located in the Applications folder.

Keep clicking past the license agreement, etc., until you get to the screen that asks you which disk to install OS X on. By default, it is set to MacBook.

Click on the Show All Disks button and you’ll see an icon for the different disks and partitions on the Mac. I named my external hard drive OS X and that shows up in the middle.

Making An External Drive Bootable Mac Os Windows 10

You can also tell it’s an external hard disk because it uses the icon with the orange hard drive. Click Continue and then follow the instructions to complete the installation. Note that your computer may restart during the install and you don’t have to do anything. OS X will automatically continue installing onto the external hard drive rather than booting up to your internal version of OS X.

At the end of this article, I’ll show you how to boot up to the external hard drive, so skip down if you ended up using the App Store method. Note that by default, the Mac will start booting up directly to the external hard drive until you change it.

The second method to install OS X is to restart the Mac and press and hold the COMMAND + R keys. This will load up OS X Recovery.

The OS X Utilities screen will appear and here you want to click on Reinstall OS X. Again, you’ll go through some basic screens, but when you get to the hard disk screen, click on Show All Disks again.

Using this method, you’ll have to login using your Apple ID and password so that the entire OS X installer can be downloaded off of Apple’s servers. Whichever method you choose, it will take anywhere from 15 to 30+ minutes to install OS X onto your external hard drive.

Making An External Drive Bootable Mac Os Download

While OS X is installing, your computer will restart a couple of times. Note that when it finally boots into OS X, that is the version running off your external drive. To switch back and forth between the internal and external drive, you have to restart your computer and hold down the OPTION key.

When you do that, you should see at least four icons. In my case, I have five because I have Windows installed using Boot Camp. Anyway, the grey MacBook and Recovery 10.11.2 icons are for my internal OS X and the orange OS X and Recovery 10.11.3 are for the version installed on my external drive.

Use the arrow keys to select which drive to boot from and then simply press Enter. If you have a newer Mac and a USB drive that supports USB 3.0, everything should run fairly fast. Overall, it’s a fairly straight-forward process and took me less than an hour to get everything working. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Enjoy!