How to make a bootable pen drive (USB flash Drive)

The transition from floppy disk to CD was a very big change in terms of external data storage. However, pen drives – flash drives – USB thumb drives have made even CD/DVDs obsolete. Though they are costly as compared to CD/DVDs , they are very efficient in terms of data storage. There are number of ways to boot computer using these USB drives. Generally, USB disks are made bootable for installing operating system to computers. One can install mac as well as Windows from this bootable USB drives. Mac, Windows and Linux (Ubuntu) are the popular operating systems, for which , bootable USB disks are made. Here is a step – by – step tutorial ,  which shows, how to make your USB pen/ flash drive bootable.

Here , we are making a bootable USB drive for Windows 8 consumer preview.

How to make your pen drive bootable :

First of all, download Windows USB / DVD Download tool, from here , or from the official Windows website.

After downloading the tool , install in on the hard drive of your computer system.

Now run the tool and choose .iso file, which you want to install. Here, we are choosing .iso file for Windows 8 consumer preview.

After selecting the file, click on the Next button.

Here, two options are shown for making the disk bootable. Here, we want to use USB to make it bootable, hence, we’ll use USB option.

Choose the appropriate USB disk.

If your USB drive is not empty, you’ll be asked to remove the contents from it. You will have to delete the contents, but , be sure to back-up that content in your USB drive, so that, no problem may arise in future.

After formatting your USB drive, the tool will start copying the files on your USB Drive and will make it bootable.

Now, your USB pen drive / flash drive is ready to be used as bootable device.

If you have any questions / queries regarding this process, please feel free to ask through the comments.