Windows 10: Boot from rescue media Windows PE on USB drive if system drive has failed?

This is probably a dumb question, but...can you boot a PC from rescue media on a USB drive Windows PE if the main system drive has totally failed i.e. hardware failure? I wasn't sure if the boot menu is on the system drive or in the BIOS.Also, can you use an external USB HDD as recue media? I use the kind where you dock a internal SATA into an external dock. If you change which dock the drive is in, will it still be bootable?Thanks for your help, sorry for the newbie questions.

:)

 

Reflect Rescue Media USB Not Booting

Try using a different PE version for the rescue media. I made a Reflect recovery drive using PE 10 rescue media on a DVD for an old PC but this wouldn't boot. I then made another rescue DVD using PE 3.1 and that booted and worked fine. It seems is the PE type you need to use may depend on the age of the PC?

 

Macrium Rescue Media for 2 Computers on same USB

Strong chance it will just work.

You are aware you can create a boot menu option so you only need the usb drive if hard drive fails or gets badly corrupted (which usually means drive is failing anyway)?

Also you do not need to boot from Rescued Drive to make images.

 

Windows 10 reinstallation fails - Media on USB drive does not boot

Folks,

I need to replace my failing (but still functioning) Hard Drive on my Dell XPS 8300 Desktop. The operating system is Windows 10.

My plan has been to buy a brand new hard drive (DONE), install a fresh bootable Windows 10 operating system on it while connected via USB, swap the old and the new drives, and then reinstall all other applications on the new drive one by one, and finally copy the data back on. No rush, but should work.

I bought the new drive, connected it to the computer via USB (using a USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE device made by SIIG), then from (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10) downloaded the Media Creation tool (MediaCreationTool.exe), ran it from the desktop, created the ESD-USB file structure on the new hard drive, and restarted the computer.

When restarting the computer, I went into the setup (F2) to change the boot order:

• First time, I placed the ‘USB Hard drive’ ahead of the Main hard drive. The Main hard drive booted ignoring the ‘USB’ Hard drive.
• Second time, I tried again by fully disabling the main Hard drive, but with that setting, the computer didn’t start at all and I got the following message:

‘Reboot and Select proper Boot device
Or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key’

So why am I failing to boot from the external hard drive?

Is my strategy of directly installing the new Windows 10 on the external Hard drive wrong?

The Microsoft support site’s instruction is to use a ‘USB flash drive or DVD.’ But instead of the USB flash drive, I used the actual Hard Drive that I intend to install Windows 10 on. Is that wrong? And why? I did so on the understanding that the instruction to use a flash drive or DVD is so as to install the operating system on a different PC. In my case I want to install on the existing PC but on a new drive.

One way of course would be to follow the Microsoft instruction create the new installation media on the flash drive or DVD, swap the drives and boot from the flash drive or DVD. But why would the Windows Creation media boot from the flash drive or DVD but not from the USB Hard drive?

Another reason for wanting to install Windows directly on the external Hard Drive is to have access to all my application at all times.

Help please.