A few seconds later, a Windows 11 installation screen will appear, walking you through the rest of the process.Īlternatively, you can try and use the USB drive as a bootable installation drive. Once Rufus finishes, you can remove the USB drive from your PC and either keep it somewhere safe in case you need to reinstall Windows 11 on your PC, or you can plug it into another PC and use it to install Windows 11 by opening the drive and double-clicking the setup.exe file. What to do with a Windows 11 installation drive

You can now install Windows 11 with ease. It took just over 15 minutes on a Surface Pro X for me. You'll again have to wait while the program does its job, but it should be a much quicker process than downloading and creating the ISO. The same can be said for format options unless you want to change the name of the USB drive to something like 'Windows 11 install' or along those lines.Ĭlick Start when you're sure all of the options are set. There's a section in Rufus labeled Image option with several different settings - leave everything as the default. Under Boot Selection select Disk or ISO image and then click on the text that reads SELECT and pick the ISO file you created in the previous step. Remember, anything on your thumb drive will be erased during this process - so make sure it's empty or you have everything you need off of it.

Select your USB drive using the Device dropdown. Visit the company's website to download and install Rufus, which should only take a few seconds. It's the same app that Microsoft itself uses in its guide for creating a Windows 10 bootable drive.

To turn a standard USB drive into an installation drive, you'll need to use a program called Rufus. How to flash Windows 11 to your USB drive With the ISO finished, this is how Rufus should look before you flash Windows 11 to your USB drive.

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