Need major help installing Windows ONTO a Usb drive..

[Zeptinune]

Hey guys I need some major help installing either windows XP or windows 7 on my USB stick so I can boot my computer from the USB and use it like a normal installation.

I've read countless articles about how to do this but they are all extremely old and probably very outdated.. (2006) Back then we only had 256MB drives and such..

Other articles I read tell you how to install Windows on a USB but not how to allow your computer to boot from the USB like it would be a HDD.
I know how to set up my BIOS and I don't need an explanation in that respect I just need a step by step guide or at least a good guide on how to install either XP or 7 onto a USB, not from I've done that 1,000,000 times.

Thanks heaps for any help. I really need to do this ASAP.
Thanks for understanding.

~Zept

 

[Petey7]

Windows can not be run off of a USB drive. You can unstall XP to a USB drive, but during boot Windows flashes (turns off and on) certain parts on a computer to test them. The USB ports are one of them. As soon as the USB ports are turned off, the boot freezes and eventually you get a BSOD.

The best idea is to use a linus installation. I recommend Ubuntu 10.04. A lot of people use it so its easy to get help with it.

 

[Lemur]

I cannot attest to this, so buyer beware
How to create a bootable Windows 7 USB flash drive
Of course you can install Win 7 with a flash drive, but you just want to boot off the usb drive.

 

[Zeptinune]

Ubuntu is actually the reason I want to do this. Linux has wiped both my partitions (First one I commonly wipe and do a new install, second has all of my important stuff on it) so I need to boot my computer off a USB stick without modifying my poor destoryed HDD on my laptop so I can run Recuva or something to try and get everything I can off the HDD. If I install an OS on my HDD I risk making files that are on it even further unrecoverable... so unless you guys know another way, booting from a USB is my only hope. This would not alter my HDD and allow me to run a windows environment as well as install a tiny little program on it to recover my files and post them to an External 1TB drive...

I've also tried multiple methods in trying to recover my files using Ubuntu 10 but unforunately Ubuntu is pretty much not an OS that supports recovering your files if you mess up...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1555656&highlight=zeptinune
^^^ That is my post on the ubuntu forums.

 

[Petey7]

What do you mean "Ubuntu wiped my partitions". Nothing of the sort should happen for any reason other than user error.

 

[Zeptinune]

What do you mean "Ubuntu wiped my partitions". Nothing of the sort should happen for any reason other than user error.

Ubuntu warned that my installation may fail if I don't allocate a disk for 'swap' so stupidly I allocated the Drive with all of my important stuff on it. Not knowing that it would simply format the drive and use the entire 60Gb contents for swap... I simply thought it would use whatever is left.
(Much like how a pagefile.sys works on windows xp, it uses a certain amount of disk space on a drive without actually having to format the whole thing).

I was wrong. (user error)
Being unfamiliar with ubuntu etc.

Anyway, unless anyone has another idea on how to get my files back. (Which are probably totally gone anyway but I have nothing better to do this wekeend than to try). Then i am pretty much down to just using this form of method to get my files back.

 

[Petey7]

Okay. That is actually pretty understandable for someone who is unfamiliar with Ubuntu. If you have access to or can make an Ubuntu live CD, you could boot into that to either a) try to recover your files from there, but you limited to what your RAM can old in terms of programs, or B) install to the flash drive, then download recuva or a similar program to the USB install. Some programs designed for Windows will work in Linux, but it's not always easy to figure out which without trying to for yourself.

 

[Zeptinune]

Well UBuntu pretty much has no way to recover files.. I have an SD card that has uBuntu installed on it, its got a 25MB/s r/w speed and that is what I use to boot into my computer at the moment (from the SD card) because I don't want to damage the HDD.

As far as I can see, and I think I'm pretty well educated about computers (just not when it comes to Linux) that:

1. I probably have no chance of recovering anything, but I'm going to try.
2. Booting from a USB is probably the only way of doing this, save getting a caddy and picking my laptop apart which will void its warrenty...

I have 4gb of ram. I think that's plenty to run an OS and a little 3.5Mb program. I just don't think that Recuva will work with WineHQ and I am not sure I even want to try with it because WineHQ is really only experimental.

I'm more or less limited to a windows operating system and trying to make it boot from a USB. I've read one way of doing it which involves editing a windows xp .iso so it doesn't scrub the usb drivers after rebooting etc. But it seems like it would take longer than actually recovering my files and I don't know if it will even work.

http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=11256&iTestingId=22379
As you can see.

So is there another way I can somehow recover my files?

 

[Lemur]

This may work
Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download
You will need BartPE on usb
BartPE on a USB stick - Geeks to Go Forums

 

[Lemur]

A second way is to have the OS on a primary drive, and use your current drive as a secondary. Then try Recuva.

 

[Zeptinune]

Well I've already used recuva heaps of times. It works well and I suggested that but it doesn't work with wine. I don't have another hard drive to plug this one into along side with. It's a 'LAPTOP' like I specified up at the top of the thread.

I just need to know a way that I can install XP or Vista/7 ONTO a Usb. It's 2010 there should be a relatively easy way even if it isn't a long lasting or 100% supported way, we are ahead enough to have this possible and I've heard of many people doing it. I just want to know what guide worked for who etc.

 

[Petey7]

I remember some guy figured out how to do it, but it is no easy task. A lot of work goes into it that even I wouldn't trust myself to do, and I play around in the registry at least once a week and do a number of other things I wouldn't recommend any of my friends or family to attempt.

 

[Zeptinune]

Well luckily for me I'm not family . You see my computer is more or less dead, and the data on the disk is really precious to me. It would take 4x as much time to re work everything I have lost. Sadly enough this is the case.

I will look at the link Lemur just sent me in the BartPE forums and see if the directions one of the Mods there posted for a member work for me. Will post back if it works and I might write up on my blog about it or something for future reference because all of these seem to be at least 2-3+ years old.

Nevermind the post in that forum is for something totally different. It doesn't help me at all..

 

[Petey7]

Oh, I forgot to mention. Do to it, you have to do a clean install of XP on to a hard drive, which seems out of the question for you. Seriously, I would google it. It has been a long time since I looked into, and after finding the only guide on how to do it, I gave up on that route.

PS, this goes beyond "wouldn't recommend it to a friend." This is "wouldn't do it unless you paid me" territory, but obviously, you seriously need a way to get your files back.

 

[Zeptinune]

Well I have another computer I can use to make the bootable USB stick. So that isn't a problem for me. I've heard of people who have the same issue and then did what I am going to try to do. The disk they had was damaged and corrupted and they recovered almost all of their files from it before the USB died due to all of the read/write operations. (After 100,000 they die).

 

[gregrocker]

You can copy files out of an unbootable Win7 using the DVD Repair console or Repair CD:
Copy & Paste - in Windows Recovery Console

System Repair Disc - Create