Windows 10: Windows 10 ISO: file system question

I haven't done it with diskpart lately. I seem to remember though, that there were certain things it wouldn't let you do if it was a thumb drive? "mark as active might be one of them. I don't have a thumb drive handy to test it out though. And I have some other things on the go at the moment.

 

I've done 2 CU upgrades over AU in the last 4 days. I copied the .iso file to an 8GB USB Thumb drive, plugged it into a port, opened File Explorer to that drive, right-clicked the .iso file and chose Mount. Then I went to that drive in File Explorer, double-clicked the setup.exe file and installed. In the process I chose NOT to do the updates, finished the install and when it was running good did the updates.

I used the MCT Thursday evening to get the .iso file, it installed Version 1703 Build 15063.0. Then I updated and got Version 1703 Build 15063.413 installed.

 

Here we try to find easy and safe way to make a bootable w10 iso usb drive for both uefi and legacy.

I wonder if i copy the iso extracted in a fat32 active usb it will work?

Could i avoid the dangerous disk part using wibdows or ie wizard partition tool?

It will work?

 

The Media Creation tool will do it all for you. The install media it makes is good for UEFI and Legacy. Any of these methods can be dangerous if you don't pay attention to what your doing.

 

Including the Media Creation Tool if the user has an external USB hard drive plugged in when running the MCT and they pick that instead of a flash drive.

 

Exactly my point. any of these methods can be dangerous if you don't pay attention to what your doing.

But of all the methods, the MCT, IMHO, is the easiest method if your just making the one thumb drive. If your doing up more than one though its a bit of a pain as it wants to redownload the media every time you use it. If you already have the ISO, diskpart is nice and quick, and lends itself to doing multiple drives.

 

And it seems like no matter how many safeguards are put into place to keep a user from doing something "unintentional", there is going to be user that figures out a way to get around it and wipe out a hard drive or SSD they did not want to!

 

That pretty well sums it up.

 

I totally want to learn to avoid the MCT.

I want to use the procedure explained for Disk part but in a graphical (safer) way.

Is that possible?

 

As long as the partition on the flash drive is FAT32 and marked as active, it should be good to go after you extract the files from the ISO file to it.

 

So we understood that for LEGACY and UEFI with SECURE BOOT ON we need:

- FAT32
- PRIMARY
- ACTIVE
- ISO extracted inside

Also, we can use ANY program that allows us to make a partition ACTIVE.

If that above is correct, my latest question is why is written everywhere to internet hat for LEGACY is needed a NTFS partition while for UEFI is needed a FAT32 partiton.

I will make some experiments by myself (just now I am making one USB), but if you can help, I like to understand why around is written in that way.

Thank you for you patiente.

 

A legacy BIOS computer will boot from either the NTFS or FAT32 file system. Most UEFI computers will only boot from the FAT32 file system. So unless there is a specific need to overcome the 4GB single file size limit of FAT32, there is no reason to format the partition on the USB flash drive as NTFS because FAT32 will work in both legacy BIOS and UEFI computers.

Legay BIOS computers require the partition on the USB flash drive to be marked as active in order to recognize it as bootable partition.

UEFI computers only require the proper files to be in the partition on the USB flash drive to recognize it as bootable and it does not matter if the partition is marked as active or not.

FAT32 = compatible with legacy BIOS computers and required by most UEFI computers. 4GB single file limit.
Marked as active = compatible with UEFI computers and required by legacy BIOS computers.

 

SO clear thanks!

Last thing: we must use always MBR, i am right?

 

On the USB flash drive, yes.

 

I used to use "GPT for UEFI fat32" in case of UEFI bios, that's why that my question.

Now I will test what I made in old LEGACY computer and in newer UEFI.

Again thanks.