A live USB or PenDrive is one that contains all the necessary files of an operating system and has the feature to run the operating system straight though the USB flash drive without installing it on you computer's hard drive.
It can be very useful for repairing purposes and can come very handy if your computer's hard drive is damaged or broke and you want to run your PC for some urgent task. It can also be useful for testing any new operating system before erasing your current operating system. For example Windows 8 releases and your PC is running Windows 7 and you want to try the new Windows but don't want to erase your current version of Windows. Just make a Live USB of Windows 8 test it out without making any change to your current Operating system on hard drive.
How to make a Live USB flashdrive
To make a Windows Live USB we need to have following thing
- A USB flash drive with enough free space. (I would recommend a 16GB flash drive)
- Installation disk of the operating system that you want to create a Live USB for.
- Aomei Partition Assistant Standard 5.5 (its a free-ware software download it from here)
Now lets get started. Download the software from above mentioned link and install it. After the installation run the software and click on "Windows To Go Creator" on the left side.
Insert the Windows installation disk and also plug the flash drive into your computer and click on refresh button. Now select your USB flash drive. There is no need to select the CD/DVD disk drive with Windows installation disk. It will detect it automatically. Now click on "Proceed".
And the process will start. Now you may leave the PC running and go out for a walk as process may take upto half and hour depending on the type of flash dive, so be patient.
Note: It will erase all the existing data on the USB flash drive so make sure to back up it first before proceeding.
How to run Operating System from a Live USB
After you have created the live USB, next you will be wondering how will you run it. To run the operating system from the Live USB plug it into your PC and restart the computer. Go to system BIOS or Boot Menu and select boot from USB flash drive and it will now run the operating system located on your USB flash drive.
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