Bootable Disk Partition
Victoria Steigerwald
The latter is important because the main solutions of How do I place a bootable ISO on a USB drive? don't work: Rufus, for example, doesn't offer the possibility to do it on a hard drive partition (I just tried now, the "Device" list is empty ; when I insert a USB flash drive, here it works)
If possible, I'd like to install the bootable Windows 10 installer ISO into (bootable) Partition 2 of a disk. Partition 1 of the same disk is where Windows will be eventually installed ; once it will be installed, I will be able to delete this no-longer needed Partition 2.
Why to do this? Here's the reason: I've installed Windows many many times, but at the end it's always slow from a USB flash drive. A nice solution would be: put the ISO installer on Partition 2 of the actual disk where it's going to be installed, then boot on this Partition 2, and install Windows on Partition 1. Then you can remove Partition 2. It should be very fast, in the case it's a SSD for example.
There's a non publicized cheat mode in Rufus that may allow you to use an external non USB drive like an external USB one, and that's Ctrl-Alt-F. Basically what this does is that it might enable Rufus to list drives that are seen as removable/hot-plug by Windows, regardless of whether they are USB based. Thus, provided that your BIOS/UEFI firmware properly tags them (you may have to fiddle with your BIOS options for that, but be mindful that not all BIOSes allow you to do that), you might be able to use an e-SATA drive.
Now, here comes the BIG DISCLAIMER: The reason why this is a non publicized option is because you will receive absolutely no support regardless of whether the option works or not and also and I make also NO GUARANTEE WHATSOEVER that it'll work for the purpose you want. For instance if Rufus happens to destroy valuable data while using Ctrl-Alt-F, you are 100% on your own. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
I will also point out that this will still result in the whole drive being partitioned and reformatted, so it'll only work if you can dedicate a whole drive. If you want partition preservation then you're on your own.
"dd" would work well in this task (writing an ISO file to a partition). I don't know if it has a Windows version or not, but you can boot your computer with a Linux Live usb, then use the "dd" tool from there.
The most efficient way to accomplish what's asked is to perform the steps below, as MakeWinPEMedia will create a bootable partition not reliant on the BCD Store that can be selected from the BIOS/UEFI boot menu.
This is a common need related to the partition manager in the forums. Given that, this article will guide you to create a bootable USB partition manager so to help you safely manage hard drive partitions without booting up OS
Briefly speaking, a USB bootable partition manager is burnt with a partition magic software ISO file. With a bootable partition manager, Windows users can boot their PCs into a WinPE state from a USB bootable drive and manage partitions flexibly and safely.
If you are looking for a complete guide for creating a bootable partition manager, follow the tutorials below, we'll show guide you to create a partition magic bootable USB and safely manage disk partitions without booting up Windows OS.
EaseUS Partition Master is the best partition manager for both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows operating systems. EaseUS Partition Master can create a partition manager bootable USB that allows Windows users to boot PC from the USB drive to safely manage hard drive partitions.
Step 1. To create a bootable disk of EaseUS Partition Master, you should prepare a storage media, like a USB drive, flash drive or a CD/DVD disc. Then, correctly connect the drive to your computer.
Step 3. You can choose the USB or CD/DVD when the drive is available. However, if you do not have a storage device at hand, you can also save the ISO file to a local drive, and later burn it to a storage media. Once made the option, click the "Create" button to begin.
[1] "Resize/Move" enables you to adjust space of a selected disk partition as wish. Right-lick "Resize/Move", you can shrink a volume, extend the other one, or create unallocated space for special use.
[2] "Clone" aims to make two identical hard disks or partitions with the same layout and content. You can use the "Clone" feature to upgrade a hard disk, replace a failing one, backup the drive data and so on.
[4] "Format" is frequently used in many situations. By formatting a drive partition, you can alter the file system, fix some corruption issues, and sometimes remove viruses and malware.
[7] Conversion between GPT and MBR, NTFS and FAT32, and Basic to Dynamic is getting more and more popular among EaseUS Partition Master customers. Besides all the listed benefits, there are so many functional yet practical features are waiting you to explore.
If the current OS on your system is bootable and when loaded you can see the External HDD you can simply copy a Windows or Ubuntu installation disk to any partition on your External Drive and run either of them to install one of the OSs. After installing one OS you can then install a boot manager and install the other OS.
I have Ubuntu 14.04 with a lot of packages and work-related stuff that I am very happy with it. It is installed on my main SSD drive which is a 120GB one (I had chosen "/" when I installed Ubuntu, so I believe everything should be on this drive). It shows up as /dev/sda.
Since the new 240GB drive has obviously more capacity and is faster (a newer generation than my 120GB one), I want to move my Linux to this new drive. This new drive shows up as /dev/sdb and at the moment it is not formatted or anything (I have literally unpackaged and inserted into my PC right now :P)
Clonezilla is a free partition and disk imaging/cloning tool which can be used to backup all your data (whole disks or partitions) in a highly compressed way and later clone it back to your hard disk to get it into the exact same condition. This is faster than installing the OS most of the times.
This will basically create an image of you disk sda and write it onto sdb (same partition layout etc.) Ofcourse this'll write the whole 120GB as it's file-agnostic. Thus very safe, but not the fastest, if you only use small portions of the disk.However if the input disk is rather full it might even be faster.
Mount the partition where you need to install GRUB 2 (Hard disk partition) and the file system appears in Nautilus. Now we have to mount the correct Hard disk partition to make changes to actual Hard Disk MBR. For that we need to:
Unlike the other answers this allows you to clone the Linux installation and have it added to Grub menu with your current installations intact. Additionally it automatically modifies /etc/fstab for you and updates grub boot menu.
rsync is used for optimal speed should you choose to reclone the partition. This is beneficial if upgrade fails, you wait for bug fix and want to run upgrade again. Similarly you may have chosen wrong options during upgrade and want to do it again.
If you do not have a USB adapter, the same procedure should work with hot-swapping of disks, but here you are on your own. A safer way is to use a USB disk or CD/DVD with installed system (e.g., installation medium). In this case, you can put both disks (the new and and the old one) in their places from the start, then boot from the medium and do the copying etc.
Below is my research with description of trying to copy Ubuntu 20.04 with enabled hibernation on separate swap partition on Thinkpad T420 to new SSD drive based on answers in the current question. Eventually I had success but encountered many problems (nuances) while trying this recommendations.Below SSD and HDD will be considered as interchangeable terms.
For copying I used rsync command.The problem was that my new SSD drive did not boot Ubuntu without old SSD drive (both SSD drives must be connected). The only recommendations about this situation I found was to install or update or recover Grub configuration. But this was not helpful.Setting UUID of new root to grub config and updating grub as recommended here:
If you do this for Ubuntu with enabled hibernation on separate swap partition you also have to update UUID of swap partition in /etc/uswsusp.confand run command for updating initramfs to apply the change:
Currently trying to use this answer to migrate my install from old HDD to new HDD. I'm failing at the step "Install grub to the new drive". Grub keeps pointing/finding the install on the old HDD and I don't know how to convince Grub to look at the new HDD.
Ubuntu copied in such a way is loading normally but I noticed some problem with security system:When I mount other drive's partitions by gnome-disks I cannot open them in nautilus (clicking their links in gnome-disks will do nothing). This is due to error: Permission denied.
( Update. Later I found out that problem with Permission denied was due to bad files copying. Command rsync -a does not copy all properties of files and cannot be used for copying system files. Need to use command like rsync -axHAWXS --numeric-ids --info=progress2 in case of rsync but better to use cp -a because cp works faster than rsync for local copying - Copy entire file system hierarchy from one drive to another )
For more high speed it is better to insert source and destination SSD drives inside notebook (the second SSD drive by optibay / caddy adapter), and will run dd command from Bootable USB stick or USB SSD / USB HDD.I found two programs for Ubuntu to make bootable USB stick or USB HDD. I wanted to make USB HDD (SSD) and this was quite challenging.
WoeUSB program also can be used for creating bootable HDD, not only USB stick but this is not specified in the program description.The command below creates bootable HDD from Windows 10 Pro image (by UI it is not possible to specify USB Hard drive, only USB stick):
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