Adding a boot partition to my external hard drive

Question

I'm working in Windows 7 and trying to create a bootable Windows 7 partition. I'm working with a computer with no optical drive and the only USB device I have is a 2TB external HDD with a bunch of data. It has 2 partitions, the first is NTFS with my data, and the second is empty and 20GB large. I've tried formatting the 20GB partition as FAT32 and marking it active, but UNetbootin and Windows 7 USB/DVD download tool cannot seem to find the partition.

I don't want to move all my data. Is only the first partition eligible to boot? Can I make the bigger partition with all my data have the Window 7 boot data without moving all my files? Is there a way to make the second partition bootable?

Solution

Actually you can do.

Goto your Disk Management (Hope you know the Disk Manager) or Type DiskMgmt.msc in Run

Now you can see in the 1st Row Disk0 shows as Dark Blue Border, it means it is Primary Partition. and rest of them are in green border. it's called Extended Partition.

I guess your 2nd Partition is Extended. because you cannot boot from extended partition. all bootable partitions should be Primary.

1) All you have to do now is, open the DiskMamagement and Right Click on the 2nd Partition and Delete it. so it will become full black.(you need to delete twice)

2) now in the RUN type CMD (Command Prompt). and type again Diskpart Press Enter

3) in that, type List Disk that will show you the Volume list so select the appropriate Disk by typing Select Disk 0

4) now type again. Create Partition Primary

5) after that type again to format the created volume Format FS=NTFS Quick

and That's it. now Windows 7 DVD Tool will Detect your Partition

Comments

[Stuart]

Wow, thanks! I was seeing recommendation for FAT32. Does it matter?

[Stuart]

Can I have multiple primary partitions OR is it just that I don't need my data partition to be primary?

[Stuart]

You say "OS", but I am putting an OS install on that partition, not an actual OS. By OS, do you mean anything that can be booted to?

[Kirk]

i didn't understand?

[Stuart]

Should I format FAT32 for UEFI?

[Kirk]

Some motherboards support NTFS for UEFI, some are not. if you can make sure then goahead with NTFS or not, just use FAT32