As you likely know, unlike its successor, none of the Windows 7 editions allow you to install Windows 7 on a USB flash/hard drive and then boot Windows 7 from the USB. For the uninitiated, installing Windows from a USB is completely different from installing Windows on a USB. In the first scenario, we use the USB as a bootable media to install Windows, and in the second one, we install Windows onto a USB drive and boot Windows from it.
If you want to install Windows on a USB flash drive or USB hard drive, this is the easiest way to install Windows 7 on USB and boot from it. You don’t need to download complex scripts or execute commands in order to install Windows 7 onto USB.
In this guide, we’re going to show the easiest way to install Windows 7 on a USB flash drive or USB hard drive and boot Windows 7 from it.
Things you need:
# Windows 7 ISO image file (32-bit or 64-bit)
# WinToUSB (check Step 2 for download links)
# 16GB+ USB flash drive or hard drive (8GB drive should do fine but can’t confirm)
Installing Windows 7 onto to USB flash drive or hard drive
Step 1: Kickstart the procedure by connecting your USB flash drive or hard drive to your Windows 7/8 PC. Please backup all data before continuing further, as the drive will be erased.
Step 2: The next step is to download WinToUSB software by visiting this official page. WinToUSB supports both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows 7/8. Run the downloaded setup file and then follow the straightforward on-screen instructions to complete the installation. You can install WinToUSB either on Windows 7 or Windows 8.
Step 3: Launch WinToUSB software. On the home screen, click the button next to the ISO file box to browse to the Windows 7 ISO image file and click the OK button to open it. And then select the edition of Windows 7 that you would like to install on the USB.
Click the Next button to proceed to the next step.
Upon selecting the USB drive, you’ll see a warning dialog with the “Selected device needs to be formatted. Are you sure you want to continue?” message. Click the Yes button to continue.
Step 5: Finally, you’ll be asked to select the system partition as well as the boot partition on the USB drive. If you haven’t partitioned your USB drive, you can simply select the same partition (full drive) as the system partition as well as the boot partition (refer to the picture). And, if you have two or more partitions, please select a partition to use as a boot partition and then another partition with at least 16 GB of space as a system partition.
Click the Next button to begin installing Windows 7 onto the USB drive. This process might take hours, depending on your USB drive’s speed and overall system performance. That’s it!
In order to boot from this bootable Windows 7 USB, you need to enable the boot from USB feature in the BIOS/UEFI.
Between, if you are on Windows 10, refer to our use Rufus to create Windows 10 To Go drive.
becker666 says
Tried Pro and Home versions it installs and boots but both give me Profile error & cannot login..I can get in via Safe mode…from there tried multiple things to fix the profile error without success.. What is wrong in my case???
Charlie B. says
I wonder if this method would boot windows the same way the HDD does inside the PC.
The USB pen drive i have downloaded the ISO file to only asks me to Install Windows (or reinstall it (erasing everything on the HDD).
My need is to have an alternative access to the operating OS straight from the USB pen drive.
(that is another operating full copy of my legitimate Win 7 Home Premium 64bit with SP1).
on another note: Microsoft tells me that i cannot download the ISO file to a CD or DVD drives. They say it is possible with Windows 8 and 10 but not windows 7)
Any comments from this forum members on this?
Thank you
Raj Kumar says
This method worked for the Windows 8 Pro 32 Bit version also, and it took 15 mins or so for the process to complete, nothing simpler and easier than this to get a Windows Live USB stick. I suppose it should work for Windows 10 also.
Paul Mealie says
This procedure worked miracles for me. I bought a Gigabyte Brix i5 5200 real cheap not knowing there is NO place for a hard disk. You can only install an mSATA card inside. So I wanted to use my 500 GB external 3.5 inch drive (in a usb case) to run windows. I followed these instructions and windows installed seamlessly and in less than 15 minutes! I did not have to change any bios settings. When I powered up my Brix it saw the drive and immediately Windows 7 started the setup. I am now installing all the various drivers from the DVD which I copied to a USB stick. I am thrilled to death! Thank you so much for this.
John Jackson says
WinToUsb does not allows to install in legacy mode to Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 USB Device connected to USB 2 port.
Jerry says
any way to install w7 64 WITHOUT wintousb?
I keep getting errors with that program.
Susan says
Doesnt work!
I keep getting this error trying to boot the new usb install.
“The User Profile Service failed the logon”
RAMJI says
I did these things exactly. But… after loading windows … the process showing… “installing devices at 14%”. i left in that stage for whole night… but no response.
Claudio says
“Memory card inside a Card reader” is most of the times seen as a USB device, since most of the card readers are really a USB device.
Warning, with order, when more than one USB storage is plugged… more if sometimes are only plugged some of them.
Some BIOS can boot from more than one USB device, most of them set it as FIRST disk, but other do not, worst others let the internal HDD as First disk… that can cause a lot of problems when booting from USB.
To solve that problem, Linux opted to use references to the disk not by using the number of the disk (/dev/sd$), it uses a GUID (UUID also called), also can be use a channel id /dev/By… but that makes you need to connect to the same port; that in Windows is not an option, it allways references by number ID seen in the BIOS list… so make sure your USB boot is the FIRST (best trick is not to have any other USB device connected).
So if you try to install from a SD card inside a reader to a USB stick… they can be TWO usb devices (the reader can be a USB)… so try without the reader… open chasis and disconnect it (for laptops it can be more hard, some are soldered)… other option is to SWAP drives id (Grub2 bootloader can do that and is not affected by disk order, then chainload, etc)
Sorry i can not be more specific… hardware is not allways the same on every computer! .
A way to test if your card reader is USB (or if it acts like that on boot) is to take a memory card (do not know less possible size, but 64 MiB may be enough), install on it the Grub2 bootloader… then reboot and ask BIOS to show boot devices list… if it appears, go to BIOS and see if BIOS explicity has an option to boot from your card type (Boot from SD, etc) if the BIOS only has USB Boot, then your card is seen as a USB device, so be warned.
If your card reader is USB, maybe you need thar card be (or not be) present to be able to boot Windows from USB stick / USB HDD.
Also check if BIOS has different options called USB Floppy, USB HHD, etc… on the boot menu… booting a USB HDD like if it where a USB floppy is prone to fail.
As i said, there is out there a lot of different hardware. Hope i could let clear what to check in order to be sure your boot device is seen as the FIRST device… else booting Windows can fail miserably (bootmgr not found, BCD read erros, blinking cursor over black background, BSOD, error codes, etc)… and on some rare motherboards is the opposite, being FIRST or SECOND, etc (a different position then when windows was installed) fails.
Good luck to all!
Martin says
Can this process be used successfully starting from a laptop running Windows 10?
I was upgraded to Win 10 from Win 7 and somehow lost the ability to revert to Win 7. I have a good, fast ext hdd I’d love to set up with Win 7.
Coldstone says
Installing to a USB stick now! Awesome app to make something that’s a hassle into a breeze.
Only thing worth mentioning is that the install was fine until selecting the system & boot partition. I kept getting the “Insufficient space” error with default settings. It was set at 14Gb default on a 32 (28.81)Gb stick.
The solution was as simple as changing the default 14Gb setting to match the stick. I.E. For my 32 stick i had to select 28Gb (Max). After that the install went fine.
Hope this helps someone. :)
~Coldstone
Salman Mansoor says
Thanks for sharing this way of installing Windows on External Drive.
I am facing issue when i successfully boot at the first time and then install any driver or software and restart the Windows crashes every time and goes to recovery mode.
Please help.
Dennis Case says
I inherited a HP Elitebook 2650p which is a laptop that has a high incidence of chipset failure. With all the garbage laptops that HP sells, I don’t know why anyone would buy one. There is a laundry list of HP laptops that have the
chipset problem just like back when they had the NVIDIA chipset problem. These laptops stop recognizing the
hard drive with a 3F0 error but thanks to this how to, I am running Windows from a external hard drive so the
laptop is not a complete waste. It’s a little clunky with a external hard drive attached but it works. Thank You!
Johns says
WintoUSB creates a VHD file of the specified size (default 14GB) which will be the size destined to the C: partition. I believed it will install as normal.
Bojan says
I installed win 10 x64 on the External HDD, but i have win 7 32bit on the laptop, when i start the windows with BIOS set to boot from external the windows is loading forever, i can not start up, its just stuck in loading
biwo says
if anyone got the insufficient error message after selecting where to install the boot and the system partition, i solved it by clicking on the virtual memory adding more then when i got the error again i set it back to the default i think it was 16GB and when i clicked next it started installing W7 on my USB. hope it helps
Brochardt says
You are a genius !!!
I spent three days of my holidays f…..g with boot camp and window. Your procedure took me 30 minutes.
Microsoft and Apple please listen – there are hard ways and easy ways to do things. The geniuses are in LEAN !!!
stu says
tried this cause my laptop hd died. used my desktop to install windows 7 on my external hd. when i tried to boot from the hd on my laptop i get stuck on the “starting windows” page. laptop is a dell studio xps. any suggestions?
khuyaghuu says
Thank you very much! I’ve installed windows 10 on my external usb ndd and working great! ty again.
Manoj Singh says
As stated above I have downloaded WinToUsb Free edition and tried to install Windows 7 in a 16GB USB flash drive, first I have selected the ISO and then selected my above mentioned USB flash drive but immediate after selection of USB drive getting an error message “Disk or Partition space is insufficient. (0x000000C2054C0000)”. please guide me at this point what to do? Is there any formatting problem with USB drive?
Cal says
To eidotevil and others with boot problems after installing Windows to external USB: personally I’ve found that Windows 7 without Service Pack 1 has issues with recognizing USB disks at startup. So I downloaded (it’s legally available so long as you have a valid key) an ISO of Windows 7 with SP1 included, which solved my problems. Hope that helps.
eidotevil says
Recently I bought a Lenovo laptop (50-80), and I did the process instructed above in this article from my desktop (win7 x64) to an external 2TB Western Digital HDD which I have partitioned into three ntfs partitions. When I finish the process and connect my WD USB HDD to my Lenovo laptop I always get BSODs. What’s up with that?
Also the reason why I started searching for a guide like this was because I got different errors when trying to install win7 to my laptop, mostly that it’s stuck at initializing my USB hard disks even if I don’t have any connected (I’m installing from an SD card in a card reader o.O). So my thought is, maybe my laptop has some USB issues? Something in the bios that prevents me from doing stuff? Dunno. Please help.
Tylor says
I am really intrigued as to if this works. My pc is currently running on Windows 8. If I were to install Windows 7 on a 512gb usb, would it work like another computer or as a separate drive? And would it install with no issues? Please someone give me a detailed explanation.
Bernard GUILLOT says
I tried it on my laptop MBPro 15″ mid 2012 with USB3 running Yosemite.
I used Vmware Fusion7 to run WintoUSB2.0 to instal an ISO of Win7 Pro
The Tuto was easy to perform but I could not go longer after rebooting:
Starting Windows and nothing else…
Thanx for an accurate help!
lin naing says
Really easy and very useful
Thank you very much sir.
Sert says
I have installed W7 with this method, can I Use the hard drive as principal hard drive in my laptop?.
I tried this because I cudnt format my laptop because my display doesnt work and i culdnt boot from usb drive, so I unmounted my hdd and instal W7, so I want to know if this is posible. Tank you.
Merobieboy says
I cant select the partitions?!
Sayed Munir Sadat says
Hello dear admin,
thanks from ur good guidelines för the WinToUsb.
I installed win7 to a 16gb flash drive, but since the paging file size to drives is Zero, the windows runs too too too slow.
I tried custom paging file size for almost 5gb free space of the installed flash drive, yet still it runs the same.
So please if u guide me reach a faster windows in usb.
My laptop specs:
Dell – inspiron360
Ram – 512mb
Pentuim R
Thanks.
Bob says
When I get to “Please select destination disk” and the select the external drive I get “sector size not supported”.
I’m not a techy like most of you seem to be so can anyone enlighten me on this?
Thanks
Bob
Charlie says
How do you make WintoUSB install by UEFI? It only shows Virtual Hard Drive and Legacy options. Why? Windows 8’s Fastboot feature does not work when booting in Legacy Mode.
Luciano says
Hi there, my question is if this method of instaling Windows 7 x64 on a hd with usb 3.0 with a host computer with also Windows x64 and usb 3.0 works if then after the instalation I plug it to use windows on a Macbook with usb 3.0. the guide is really easy to follow thank you for the information, hope you answer my question and if this works what should do with the drivers to use the keyboard and mouse. thanks again sorry for my bad english
anthony estacio says
thank you very much for the procedure its very useful. thank you very much for the help
amin says
very useful article tnx, thou in my experience it took forever to create it i use transcend usb 2 idk why it take so long to make it
admin says
@ Harjinder
Yup, the boot will take double the time of usual boot.
Harjinder says
It worked great on my WD My Passport Ultra 1TB Ext HDD,the only issue is its boot time is more than usual which is f9 for me because I use USB 2.0.The problem is that I am not able to allocate HDD space for Virtual Memory(Page File).Please help me with this.
Mustak Ali says
Really this is a easy and best method to install windows 7. I will apply this technique on my laptop.
andre says
it worked for me on a lenovo t540 , i used a small partition on a 1tb silicon power external hard drive and selected the system and boot partition as the same partition , the program did not ask me to format as this partiton was already in NTFS . i booted threw a usb 2.0 port , very important
CK says
I attempted this on a 2tb via USB and while I can select the boot drive, there is no “dot” selector for the system partition…and the system does not say anything about formatting this drive. I’m guessing I’ve hit a drive size or prep snag of some sort. It was worth a try, back to the drawing board.
Kunal says
Can I use this method from Macbook running Macos and then use windows on macbook?
Way says
I tested the app , it works great for me . I was able to install Win7 x64 on my drive without any issues .
admin says
To everyone who’re experiencing issues, I tried WinToUSB to install Windows 7-32-bit on USB again without any issues. I would like to mention a couple of things here. Please make sure that the version of your host Windows and the version you’re trying to install on USB are same. That’s, for instance, if your PC is running Windows 7 32-bit, please try to install Windows 7-bit only on your USB and not 64-bit and vice versa.
I had formatted the drive in FAT32 before using it. I am trying to reproduce the error some of you are getting. I request all of you try it again.
Art says
I get the same error as above, “When trying to reboot i get a “BOOTMGR is missing Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart”.
Sean says
What about installing it to a usb 3.0 device, from what I have read, windows 7 has issues with usb 3.0 drivers while trying to do this. I am not sure if it will only work at usb 2.0 speeds or if it will not work at all. I recall reading somewhere about loading the usb 3.0 drivers at some point during the installation but I can’t find that article again.
Also what about driver issues if you want to use it on multiple computers as a portable OS?
Anthony says
When trying to reboot i get a “BOOTMGR is missing Press Ctrl Alt Del to restart”. I fallowed the steps and im trying to install it on a portable harddrive. thats plugs into the wall and has 35 gb free space.