There are many reasons to take a portable Windows installation in your pocket. It is because there is the possibility of having a bootable Windows rescue system at hand at all times. This is not a new concept to the world and I'm pretty sure you've probably heard of this concept of using Windows 10 as a portable operating system. Today I am going to talk about this topic a bit and explain to you how to do this properly. For this, I am going to use Rufus, which allows you to install a portable version of Windows 10 on a USB flash drive. 

Rufus is a simple, lightweight application that allows you to install and run almost any Windows operating system on a USB flash drive or portable hard disk, using an ISO image or CD / DVD drive as the installation media. Rufus also supports the creation of bootable WinPE USB flash drives and can help you transfer the contents of WinPE to a USB flash drive and make the drive bootable easily. Rufus also has an easy-to-use wizard interface that provides step-by-step instructions on how to create a bootable USB flash drive.

Even though you can install almost any operating system with Rufus, we don't recommend installing older Windows versions such as Windows 7 and Vista. This is because Windows 7 does not have built-in USB 3.0 support, so Windows 7 must be booted from a USB 2.0 port. Windows 7 is not completely portable. Because of this, you may have activation and driver problems when booting on different computers. Due to these reasons, it is best to avoid installing outdated operating systems.

Now let's see how to make a portable Windows 10 installation on a USB flash drive. Before using Rufus, first, you must be an administrator on the computer on which you are installing Rufus.

Rufus

For this, you need a USB flash drive with a space of at least 16 GB and an ISO image of your preferred Windows operating system. For this tutorial, I am going to use a Windows 10 ISO file but you are free to select whatever works for you. After that, go through the following steps.

  1. Download Rufus from its official website and install it on your PC. When you are downloading Rufus, make sure to select the correct version that matches your operating system.
  2. Plug the USB flash drive to the PC and launch Rufus. Your USB flash drive will be displayed on Rufus.
  3. Now you can move your ISO file into Rufus and click on the "Start" button to start the process. This will take several minutes to finish and you have to wait till it finishes. 

Once the copying process is done, you can eject the USB flash drive and use it as a bootable USB flash drive. Please note that the performance of the Windows OS depends on the speed of the USB flash drive you selected. If you want the best experience, we highly recommend that you install Windows 10 on an SSD drive. SSD drives are way faster than USB flash drives and old hard disk drives. An SSD will improve your Windows experience for sure.