Windows 7: Installing Windows 7 via USB or SD Media

Installing Windows 7 via USB or SD Media

So Windows 7 beta is out the door and you are ready to begin your beta experience. Over the next few months there will be additional builds for Windows 7 (x86 and x64) as well as Windows Server 2008 R2 and that leads to a lot of installs and a lot of DVD burning and useless DVDs as soon as a new build is out. So why not install from USB or whatever other removable media your computer can boot from? Insert your removable media into a Windows XP or Vista PC and run the following commands from an elevated command prompt.

1. diskpart
2. list disk (find the disk number for the removable media)
3. select disk #
4. clean
5. create partition primary
6. select partition 1
7. active
8. format fs=fat32
9. assign letter=y (or any free drive letter)
10. exit

Once that is complete mount the ISO and run the following command.
xcopy x:\*.* /s/e/f y:\
Where “x” is the drive letter of the mounted ISO. Once complete boot off the device and install the OS. When a new Windows 7 or 2008 R2 build is released, simply delete the contents, rerun the xcopy command and you are ready to go again. As a note this also works for Windows Vista and Server 2008 but you already figured that out


Installing Windows 7 via USB or SD Media - Windows Live


See Tutorial also: USB Windows 7 Installation Key Drive - Create

Norm

thanks norm as always ur awsome when it comes to windows......thx

You are welcome
Norm

Hi Norm,
I'm tryin and tryin your method, but at the end of the procedure, i alway get the message "invalid drive specified ' (in french "specification du lecteur non valide".
And then, when i try to open my drive, it says it is not formatted.
Whats the f***? I do not see where i am wrong.

Note that after "assign letter y", my drive is not formated anymore and i cannot open it anymore.
the mounted drive is GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD (H so the last command is xcopy h:\*.* /s/e/f y:\
Could you help plz?

I installed 7 from my USB flash-drive and I was using XP Pro before. I got the methods similar to yours on the net but none of them worked. Since it was XP, diskpart didnt show my flash-drive(removable); so there was no way to select my flash disk. Also I found out later that there is no format command in XP's diskpart either.

But I did figure it out. If you want to try you can have a look here:

Install Windows 7 from USB using XP - MSFN Forums

Hey Jean,

It could be because if you did the previous steps, your drive must be in RAW format and even I was not able to get it to convert to FAT-32 from XP. So I had to use HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool to convert it to FAT-32.

Some commands in DISKPART are only available after Vista.

You can always use Disk Management in XP and do what the DISKPART commands do.

1. Delete partition(s) on USB
2. Create one primary partition
3. Format it.
4. Set partition as active

Then just copy all the contents of the Vista/Windows 7 install DVD on the USB stick and you're done. Copy works from explorer too, no need to run xcopy /s/e/f...Just drag and drop..

Thank you so much for your support men.
Finally I mannaged to install Seven on my Epox 8RDA3+ motherboard / Samsung S-ata2 SpinPoint / AMD Barton 2600M.
It was hard and difficult, so this is what I did (maybe that could help)

First, I have formated my brand new drive into NTFS from the Drive Manager in Win XP, mounted Seven with Daemon Tools and installed it from my IDE drive running Windows XPpro onto (Fs-ata2 fresh NTFS.
Directly, Seven said it can not install on this drive because of drivers. I downloaded 'Sillicon Image S-ata Sil 3112 for Vista' and browsed Seven to this folder.
Then, Seven copied files during +/- 10 minuts, rebooted.
I had to make (F first boot in BIOS, unplug it and let (C boot, then connect (F just at the beginning of the boot sequance, wait a lot, and then let Seven boot and boot again, without unpluggin (F anymore :-)

After that, it launched flawlessly. I have installed Antivir and Spywareblaster from my external drive, get connected to let it update.
From now, Seven has already downloaded 7 updates: for graphic, sound, PCI, S-ata... After those updates, Seven needed to be rebooted 3 times before restarting normally. But now, it's totally cool.

Again, thank you for all your help, and keep the good work.

Thank you so much. Extremely helpful.

Why does the USB Flash drive have to be formatted in FAT 32 ?