How To Run Windows 8 Off A USB Drive.. Now take your OS with you, wherever you go.

 

Windows 8 Consumer Preview was recently launched and its download article evoked quite a lot of interest, because it is uniquely different from any of its predecessors. It has a certain amount of freshness due to the radically different interface known as Metro UI, which is similar to that of theWindows Phone OS. Yet another feature that was much talked about even before its release was that the OS will be able to run directly off a USB drive (flash drives as well as hard drives). This feature will be very interesting to a lot of people. Computer repair professionals will find it very useful to take such a drive and simply plug into an affected computer to troubleshoot and fix problems. Others will find it helpful too, because you can easily take your personal data and settings with you, along with the whole operating system. We will show you how you can prepare such a Windows 8 bootable USB drive.

Requirements
USB drive with at least 16 GB capacity
Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO images
Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK) for Windows 7
MagicISO Virtual CD/DVD-ROM (MagicDisc)

The Procedure
Make sure you are running Windows 7. You are advised to choose a USB 3.0 drive, though you can also use a USB2.0 drive, but you must make sure that it is one of the faster ones. Download all the above mentioned software. You can opt to download either the 32-bit or the 64-bit version ISO of Windows 8. Download and install the MagicDisc software. Right-click on its system-tray icon, move mouse over Virtual CD/DVD-ROM and click Mount. You can then browse to the WAIK image you have downloaded and load it up. Let it autorun or run "StartCD.exe". SelectWindows AIK Setup from the left of the screen to start installing WAIK to your hard drive. This is necessary because we need the file ImageX Tool for Windows that gets installed in this process. This file helps copy Windows 8 files to the USB drive. Unmount the WAIK image from MagicDisc.

Next, plug in your USB drive and open the command prompt by running CMD. We will now run Diskpart, which is a command-line disk management utility with low-level access to the hardware. Type "diskpart" and press ENTER to start this utility. Type "list disk" and press ENTER to list the storage drives installed in your computer. Note the number against the USB drive you just plugged in (here it is Disk 1). Type "select disk 1" and press ENTER to select this drive. Type the following commands and press ENTER after each of them:

select partition 1
delete partition
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
active
exit

This will exit the utility and leave you at the command prompt again.

Now load the Windows 8 Consumer Preview ISO image into MagicDisc. Locate the ImageX Tool. This is a file named "imagex.exe", located in different folders of the WAIK installation. Depending on what version of Windows you are running, you can use the one located in "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86" if you are running 32-bit version of Windows 7, or in "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x64" for 64-bit.

Assuming that you are running a 32-bit version, type the following at the command prompt and press ENTER after each:

cd\ "C:\Program Files\Windows AIK\Tools\x86"
imagex.exe /apply f:\sources\install.wim 1 d:\

We are assuming that F: is the virtual drive where the Windows 8 image has been loaded (the source), while D: is the USB drive or the destination. Windows files will start getting copied to the USB drive. Depending on the speed of your USB drive and also of your computer's USB port, it will take some time for this process to complete. In our case with USB 2.0, it took 17 minutes and 15 seconds.

Once the copying is complete, there is only one more step left; to make the drive bootable. Windows 7 has a utility known as "bcdboot.exe" to take care of this. Just run "bcdboot.exe d:\windows /s d:" and this is done. Make sure that the drive has the files as shown in the adjoining screenshot. Your Windows 8 bootable drive is ready. You can now plug it into the USB port of any computer and boot into the spanking new OS without having to install it on the computer. Just make sure that you set the computer to boot through the USB drive. In our case, it took around 25 seconds to boot to the Start screen even when using the USB 2.0 interface. Your results may vary. Please do let us know about your experiences in the space below.

It took just 25 seconds to arrive at the Windows 8 Start screen!