{"id":458,"date":"2025-10-23T09:35:40","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T15:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/?p=458"},"modified":"2025-10-23T20:56:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T02:56:49","slug":"easily-create-a-bootable-external-drive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/23\/easily-create-a-bootable-external-drive\/","title":{"rendered":"Easily create a bootable external drive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I like having a bootable partition on my external drives and larger USB flash drives. This makes a great emergency rescue, cloning device or a bootable private PC environment without disrupting the actual computer and without taking up much space on the external drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 2 bootable images I like to use on external devices are: <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/partedmagic.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Parted Magic<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/minios.dev\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">MiniOS<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>There is a cost involved with Parted Magic, but MiniOS is a newer free contender and really unique with a restorable session ability. Here I am going to explain how I easily make any USB or external drive bootable but still contain a large area for loose data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Create a FAT32 partition on the external device that can contain the ISO of the bootable image you want to extract. On a 1tb external drive, I carve out 8gb, then the remaining is NTFS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"690\" height=\"292\" src=\"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternalDrivePartition.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-459\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternalDrivePartition.png 690w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternalDrivePartition-300x127.png 300w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternalDrivePartition-660x279.png 660w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 690px) 100vw, 690px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Open the ISO image you downloaded with an archive utility. Extract the contents onto the FAT32 partition. Below, I am using the XArchiver tool that is included with the XFCE desktop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"832\" height=\"322\" src=\"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BootableExDrive1.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-460\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BootableExDrive1.png 832w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BootableExDrive1-300x116.png 300w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BootableExDrive1-768x297.png 768w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/BootableExDrive1-660x255.png 660w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 832px) 100vw, 832px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>That&#8217;s it! Now you have a bootable external drive if you need it, or it can still be used as a regular loose data storage device.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"895\" src=\"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternallyBootedLaptop-1024x895.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-462\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternallyBootedLaptop-1024x895.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternallyBootedLaptop-300x262.jpg 300w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternallyBootedLaptop-768x671.jpg 768w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternallyBootedLaptop-1536x1343.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternallyBootedLaptop-2048x1790.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/tekweis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/ExternallyBootedLaptop-660x577.jpg 660w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">1 TB External drive booted the laptop to MinOS Ultra. Still have 997 gigs of free space.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I like having a bootable partition on my external drives and larger USB flash drives. This makes a great emergency rescue, cloning device or a bootable private PC environment without disrupting the actual computer and without taking up much space on the external drive. The 2 bootable images I like to use on external devices\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/23\/easily-create-a-bootable-external-drive\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":465,"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458\/revisions\/465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tekweis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}