If you would like to know how to create a bootable flash drive then check out our article on the free Rufus bootable flash drive utility. For our example we will boot up with a flash drive that has a bootable version of Windows 10 on it.

In this tutorial we will show you the process for booting a VM from a USB flash drive so you will know how to accomplish this for when you need to perform this task for yourself. Unfortunately, VirtualBox doesn’t have a really simple way to do this like they do for ISO files but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. But sometimes we want to install operating systems or boot up with recovery software that is not in an ISO format but rather on a USB flash drive. One procedure that is commonly used with virtualization is the installation of operating systems from ISO files and this is generally a pretty simple process and not too complicated. This type of technology allows us greater flexibility that if we were using only physical computers in our environments.

Virtualization software such as VMware, Hyper-V and VirtualBox allow us to create multiple virtual machines (computers) that run on one physical computer so we can do things such as test operating systems and software or create virtual networked computers to run our business applications on. Dont limit yourself to booting from ISO files!

Virtualbox boot from usb drive