Why you should have a USB Flash Drive with Windows and how to do it

The use of USB keys is decreasing more and more, since we tend to associate them with mass data storage, however, their usefulness goes beyond backup copies and they can serve as storage units with a face and eyes. That is why in this article we are going to teach you how to install Windows on a USB Flash Drive and at the same time we will explain what its utilities are.

A good number of computers found in homes today meet two key requirements: a hard drive and third-generation USB ports. The first one will fail sooner or later, the second one will help you to place a Pendrive to use it as the main drive for your system or better yet, have a pocket USB drive to take anywhere.

These USB sticks are better than a SATA SSD for gaming

Why use a high speed Pendrive?

There are several reasons for this, although two mainly occur to us. The first of them is none other than storing the games instead of a hard drive.

  • This may seem counterproductive to us, especially if we take into account that the vast majority of those on the market are USB 2.0 and their transfer speed is derisory.
  • However, there are drives with both a Type A and Type C USB 3.X interface that achieve the same or higher transfer speeds than a SATA SSD and technically give the same performance. Its main advantage? They are totally portable and we can take them with us anywhere.
  • Since games on PC currently do not use the capabilities of high-speed SSDs and are still designed to be functional from a hard drive, it is possible to use them as drives for games, without having to install them on the hard drive.

The other utility is to install Windows in its entirety and the set of applications and turn the Pendrive into a substitute for the hard drive. It may seem like a banality, but it has many applications. For example, if we need to take work from home to the office and vice versa and we don’t have a laptop to do it. Regarding the model of Pendrive to use for this, we recommend high-capacity models, hundreds of gigabytes and with a USB 3.0 interface.

How to install Windows on a USB Flash Drive

What we are interested in is having Windows fully functional from the Pendrive, in such a way that when we boot from it we can use the storage unit as the main one for work. This will allow us to use any PC apart from ours without compromising the content that was on its internal hard drive or SSD and not doing so with our data and programs. It is ideal when we have to work on computers that are not ours and its potential increases if we use a unit with a USB 3.0 interface. The problem? It’s not as good as SSD since it doesn’t have as many channels, but it’s a perfect replacement for a hard drive.

Windows pendrive

The steps you must follow are the following:

  • You’ll need to download the Windows ISO ( 10 or 11 ) if you don’t have it on your PC, you’ll also need to do the same with the Rufus app.
  • Run Rufus, select the drive corresponding to the Pendrive in which you want to create the portable version of Windows. In addition, you must choose the following options in the program:
    • In Boot Selection, press the SELECT drop-down button and click, once this is done, look for the ISO that you have downloaded.
    • In Image Option select Standard Windows Installation
    • Partition Scheme: GPT
    • Target System: UEFI (non-CSM)
    • File System: NFTS
    • Cluster Size: 4096 bytes
  • Once the relevant options have been chosen, press the START button and once finished you will have your Pendrive with Windows inside, from which you can install programs.
  • In the event that the PC does not recognize the Pendrive, follow our tutorial

Our recommendation is that you always have a Pendrive with Windows installed on hand for what might happen. Not only in order to have the library of games or files. In this way, if it turns out that one day the hard drive or SSD fails or there is a boot problem with them, at least you can interact with the PC and rescue the information.