How can I install a bootable Windows 10 to an external drive?
This should be simple, but I have been at it for over 12 hours and am no further forward.
The SSD on my laptop just died. It contains my Windows 10 partitions.
I have:
- a 10 year old laptop, also with Windows 10 (home edition), but only 4gB RAM, which makes everything I try excruciatingly slow
- an external 1tB hard drive
- a 16gB USB stick
- a Windows 10 ISO
- a
WindowsImageBackupfolder, created by MiniTools partition Wizard, that I can't figure out how to restore to the external drive
Tools like Rufus and Windows Media Installer don't recognize the external hard drive (maybe only USB sticks?).
How, given what I have, do I get Windows 10 installed on the external hard drive and make it bootable, so that I can use that until I get a new SSD installed (possibly instead of)?
Please note that I do not want to open my main laptop. I will leave that to the repair shop when/if I buy a new SSD.
[Update] given that the comments say that this is somewhere between very difficult and impossible to do, a I am open to jumping through hoops.
I forgot to mention that in addition to the SSD there is also another internal hard drive. For instance instance installing a Linux GRUB boot-loader to the remaining drive and having it boot into Windows on the external drive.
In the worst case, I could use a bootable Linux USB stick and GpartEd to create a new partition on the internal drive and install Windows to that, I guess ...
Any other suggestions?
The simple answer is, use another OS, such as a bootable Linux Live USB drive, which also would give access to data if parts of the SSD can be salvaged. You could even run some existing Windows programs using wine. Some Linux distros come with common applications. Ubuntu, for example, has a complete office suite, LibreOffice, which can handle documents of MS Office, and it also includes Firefox web browser and Thunderbird email client.
Since it takes about 1/2 hour total to create a live USB and to boot from it, that's certainly an easier way to get running again, and it might even provide access to the remnants of the HDD. This should tide you over until the machine is repaired.
Linux and Windows user interfaces have become more similar through the years, each adopting best features of the other. You might even decide to make Linux your primary OS.
I'm worried about these two symptoms : (1) Your SSD died, (2) The external USB disk is no longer recognized.
It looks to me like your laptop has experienced some catastrophic error, perhaps electrical in nature such as a power surge. This seems to have caused damage not only to the SSD. Therefore I'm not sure that what you plan is feasible, or that installing Windows to the second disk is without any danger of further damage.
Normally, I would counsel using the USB disk or stick to create bootable media with the ISO. After installing again Windows 10 to the computer, Windows will activate itself automatically once it got through to the Microsoft activation servers via the internet.
Perhaps visiting the repair-shop should be done sooner rather than later. There is also the question whether a 10-years old laptop that has suffered a catastrophic crash is worth this investment.