Using a USB Drive as an Installation Source

Small form factor laptop computers, often called netbook computers or

netbooks, are becoming increasingly popular. One drawback for the IT
professional, however, is that these computers are so small that they often do
not have an attached optical media drive. Although it is possible to purchase
DVD drives that use USB connections to attach to netbook computers and
perform an installation, more administrators are turning to cheap multi-gigabyte
USB storage devices, sometimes called flash drives, as their preferred
installation media of choice.
USB storage devices have several advantages over DVD-ROMs. With a USB
storage device, you can modify the operating system image directly using tools
such as Dism.exe. You can add extra drivers to the image stored on a USB
storage device, something that is not possible to do to the installation image
stored on a DVD-ROM. You will learn how to do this in Chapter 3, "Deploying
System Images." Another advantage of USB flash devices is that they have
faster read speeds than DVD-ROM drives, meaning that the time to transfer the
operating system files to the target computer's hard disk is reduced.
A USB storage device needs to be 4 GB or larger if you want to use it as a
Windows 7 installation source. This is because the x64 installation files are
approximately 3.2 GB in size and the x86 installation files are approximately 2.5
GB in size. You use one architecture's installation files only when preparing a
deployment from a USB storage device. The USB storage device should use the
FAT32 file system.
To prepare a USB storage device as an installation source for Windows
7, perform the following steps:
1. Connect the USB storage device to a computer running Windows 7 or
Windows Vista. Ensure that the storage device has no data stored on it that you
want to keep (or that you have moved such data to another storage device)
because this procedure removes all existing data.
2. Open an elevated command prompt Make sure u run cmd as
administrator (ctrl+shift & enter) and type diskpart.
3. At the DISKPART> prompt, type list disk. Identify which disk connected to
the computer represents the USB storage device.
4. At the DISKPART> prompt, type select disk X where X is the number of the
disk that you have identified as the USB storage device.
5. At the DISKPART> prompt, type clean. When the disk is clean, type create
partition primary. Then Select partition x
6. At the DISKPART> prompt, type format fs=fat32 quick. When the format is
completed type active and then exit.
Then go to boot folder of the installation source through command
prompt and type bootsect nt60/ x
7. After you have completed these steps, copy all the files located on the
Windows 7 installation DVD to the USB storage device.
8. Configure the BIOS computer on which you want to install Windows 7 to boot
from the USB storage device. Attach the USB storage device and then reboot the
computer to start installation.
There are several disadvantages to using USB storage devices as a Windows 7
installation source. Although they are reusable, USB storage devices are more

Using a USB Drive as an Installation Source

expensive than DVD-ROMs. USB storage devices are also not suitable when you
have to deploy Windows 7 to a large number of computers over a short amount
of time because you need to attach a USB device to each computer to install
Windows 7 on it.