The standard way to clean install any Microsoft Windows operating system on a device is from a bootable USB drive, which contains a downloaded ISO image on it. Installing Windows 11 is not an exception, either. Do you know how to create a Windows 11 bootable USB drive with an ISO image? What if you don't have any ISO image files available to download?
In the previous post, we discussed how to create a Windows bootable drive with Rufus, a free and open-source application for installing Microsoft Windows. It's like to image a bootable ISO file to an external USB device, but the premise is that you've downloaded the ISO file by yourself. Therefore, Rufus is one way you can follow to create a Windows 11 bootable USB drive, but we got you a better and more foolproof method to install Windows 11 with ISO to a portable USB drive.
Compared with Rufus, the upcoming method can be a perfect one. Qiling Win11Builder completely solved the problem for all inexperienced Windows users who are unable to find and download an official Windows 11 ISO file. In short, with the Qiling bootable USB creation tool, all you need is to prepare an empty USB flash drive or any other type of external USB device and give it time to automatically install the ISO image to the USB drive for you.
Step 1. The Windows11 builder is integrated with the Qiling OS2Go software. Click the download button and launch the program after installation.
Step 2. Switch WinToGo Creator to Windows Install Drive Creator. The obtained system information is available on the home screen, and it keeps updating all the time. Apart from Windows 11, Win11 builder also supports you to download Windows 10/8.1.
Step 3. Connect your USB flash drive to the computer. Win11 builder will automatically detect your USB device, so all you need to do is click the Create button.
Step 4. The software will empty your USB drive data if it's a used one. Once the downloading process begins, wait there until it finished or leave for a while to do you own job.
Step 5. After successfully downloading the Windows 11 iso image file on the USB drive, start to install Windows 11 from the bootable USB drive on your computer by following the installation wizard step by step.
It's also possible to make a bootable USB drive for Windows 11 without requiring an ISO file. Instead, you copy an installed Windows 11 to a USB drive and make it bootable on any device, including on both another Windows PC or a Mac machine.
To create such Windows 11 bootable USB drive, you need the help of Qiling OS2Go, a Windows To Go equivalent tool that can be used on any Windows 11 or Windows 10 computer. One highlight of this alternative tool is the ability to help you create a Windows To Go USB without the enterprise edition.
Primary Functions in the Windows 11 Bootable USB Drive Created by Qiling OS2Go:
Follow the step-by-step guide to create a Windows 11 portable USB drive without ISO:
Step 1. Install Qiling OS2Go on your Windows computer, it will display your system drive's used space. Plug in a USB drive that is larger than the system drive used space. Choose the target USB drive and click Next to continue.
Step 2. Qiling OS2Go will notify you that the following operation would delete all data on your drive. Make sure that you have backed up all the important data. Click the Continue button to proceed.
Step 3. Adjust disk layout. The default disk layout on the target drive will be exactly the same as the resource drive. You could also edit the layout according to your needs. Tick the option there if you're using a Solid State Drive as the Windows bootable drive. Next, click Proceed.
Step 4. Then Qiling OS2Go will start to create the portable USB drive. It usually takes a while depending on your OS and Network condition. When the progress reaches 100%, the USB drive should be bootable now.
Step 5. Insert the portable Windows USB and start your computer. Press the required key (F2, DEL, F10...) to access BIOS. Choose to boot from the USB disk.
Note: Please make sure that the boot mode (UEFI or Legacy) of the portable USB and your target computer are the same, otherwise you may not be able to boot.