How to boot from usb
Level of difficulty: Moderate.
With advents in technology, removal external media like CDs and DVDs are slowly becoming obsolete. Of course, operating systems still prefer bootable diskettes for retail purposes, but their lack of versatility make them cramped for applicability. With these media dwindling, the USB devices have been slowly taking up their places. Now, booting from the USB devices are also becoming a rather popular practice, because of reasons like interchangeability and portability of data, multiple number of recordings and lack of any external paraphernalia. Any computer user with a decent amount of knowledge about how external USB devices work can boot from these devices. Generally, the devices that allow booting from them include external HDD, Flash-memory enabled drives and even certain smart-phones. After boot, the files from the USB media is copied and installed onto the system directory of the computer, and the process functions normally.
Materials Needed:- Computer with valid USB ports
- USB device
Step 1
Booting from external media like flash drives and external HDD are extremely easy, if certain very basic steps are followed. First, one needs to tweak around with the default boot order for the BIOS setup. One should make BIOS list the option for the USB device before other media like disks, etc. unless this is done, the computer would completely ignore the attached USB device and boot from the hard disk itself.
Step 2
Figure out your available USB ports. Then, find out if the particular USB devices (like external HDD, pen drives) are bootable. Generally, the computer does not copy existing files from the drive. The executable is initialized in the drive itself, and the relevant system files are copied to the primary (system) directory. Usually, operating systems, system diagnosis and repair tools and anti-virus programs are great for USB booting. While in the process, the user must make sure that the motherboard checks all available USB ports for boot files.
Step 3
The user must restart his computer to continue the process. At a certain point of the process, the user would be prompted to press a key at the keyboard. This enables the computer to source out the boot files from the USB devices. One must be extremely attentive in this case, as no response from the user often prompts the computer to boot from the hard disk.
Step 4
The computer, at this stage, would probably have started booting and would be displaying the progress bar for the boot. Once the booting is successful, the computer restarts again and prompts the user to safely eject the device.