Question about installing Windows 7 on a disk partition

Hello,

I am trying to install windows 7 onto a Compact Flash card but am unable to get Windows to see the partition I created. I was following the steps at: How to Make Windows Boot From a CF Card | eHow.com

I ran into no problems until I booted from the flash and got to the screen that prompts for an installation location, the only target was disk 0 partition 1, which is the primary hard drive.

The flash is interfaced to the laptop (lenovo w500) via a CF to SATA adapter and is recognized as the drive I assigned it as per the steps above as well as in the BIOS as an ATA HDD. I saw several threads about problems similar to this but am wondering if in this particular case the issue is caused by the partition being on a flash card. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I can't find any site that claims it's been done online but several claims are not followed up upon that it can be imaged onto the SD card. So you can try that using Acronis (free versions with any WD or Seagate in the mix), or Macrium - Image your system .

Once imaged onto card either install EasyBCD to the extant OS to try adding the imaged OS by drive letter and type to see if it will boot from a Dual Boot menu; or unplug all other drives, see if you can set card first to boot in BIOS setup, then if it won't boot confirm it is marked Active to run Startup Repair - Run 3 Separate Times .

Thanks for the reply, I will look into that, I have also seen suggestion that Windows doesn't like flash because it doesn't appear as a fixed disk, is there any merit to that? and if so, how do I change it?

MS works hard to keep it's OS off of flash drives due to piracy concerns. If you can carry it around in your pocket, how would it stay activated otherwise? Reports we have that it's been done to USB stick are that it runs slow as a dog, although Win8 is different in this regard so you might want to pursue that at our sister Forum.

The controller may also be different for your SD card so perhaps imaging will work since the bottleneck with USB flash has always been the USB controller.