How to Install Windows 10 on External Hard Drive

Steps to install Windows 10 on external hard drive

Step1. Format the external hard drive with NTFS and connect it to your computer. Click Start button and input "CMD" in the search box, and then click "cmd.exe" to launch the Windows PowerShell prompt. Once the Command prompt window pops up, input "diskpart".

Step2. Input the command line "disk list" then press Enter button, after that all the drives of the host computer will be listed. As you can see in the following picture, Disk 1 is the destination external hard drive for WTG in this example.

Step3. Enter the command lines in the picture below. This will clean the partition first, then a primary partition will be created. After that, the rest of the command lines will format the external hard drive and activate the partition on it. The last step is to assign the drive letter, here we choose E as the drive letter.

Step4. Open "Dism.exe" to extract the install.wim file from drive F and move it to E drive (the destination USB hard drive), please refer to the command line in the picture below.

Step5. Enter the final command line ”bcdboot e:\\windows /s e: /f ALL” to ensure the USB hard drive bootable. Here ends the whole process.