Installing without optical drive

[H3ndo08]

Hi all,

My friend recently bought a PC from pc specialist without an optical drive. In the past, pc specialist have installed windows 10 for ither friends so i thought this time would be no different. However they did not install it.

My question is, is it possible to install windows from an external optical drive connected to the PC via USB? Instinct tells me yes but as it is connected through usb and not directly to the motherboard I'm having doubts about this. I know you can create a bootable USB drive but it would be easier just to use an external disk reader.

 

[YoAndy]

Yes you can use an external optical Drive. Or you can buy windows 10 already installed on a USB Thumb drive(that's what I did with a new build not to long ago) and personally I think it is the easiest way..

 

[R_1]

it should work. if the drive has any special drivers you may have issue but should be fine. slow but fine.

 

[captaincharisma]

you could get an external DVD drive but using a USB flash drive would be easier and faster. all you need to do is use the media creation tool from MS website to load a copy of windows 10 on a USB drive (8GB minimum) and boot from it. also if you need to purchase a copy then most web stores (Microsoft included) will just e-mail you the key to use to activate.

 

[derekullo]

In fact, most any usb 3.0 or 3.1 flash drive will install windows faster than a dvd.

A 16x dvd is 16 x 1.32 or 21 megabytes a second read.

 

[H3ndo08]

For the external disk reader would we need to change the boot order in the BIOS for this to work or will it just recognise it straight away?

 

[captaincharisma]

For the external disk reader would we need to change the boot order in the BIOS for this to work or will it just recognise it straight away?

if there are no other bootable drives then it should but its best to modify the boot order or just select it from the boot menu