please help with getting my USB formatted/bootable

[11225e]

Hello. I am trying to make my 1TB eGo USB 2.0 Desktop Hard Drive bootable. I am running Win 7. The bios hardware supports booting from a USB drive, and I am able to select the USB drive from the boot menu. But when I choose the USB drive, I get:
A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
I am able to read/write from the USB drive normally via Win 7 with no problems, but I am missing that something "bootable" - what is it? I used bootsect make the USB drive bootable. thanx.
(the USB drive is formatted NTFS and could this matter – my computer is formatted 64 bit and the USB drive is formatted with whatever you get when you select NTFS - would that be 64bit in my case?)

 

[play2mefish]

Try this program from HP, it is the one widely used:

Download HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool 2.2.3 Free - Windows-based Format Utility for HP Drive Key or DiskOnKey USB Device - Softpedia

However, questions need to be answered here, are you trying to run Windows 7 from the USB drive? If so, just install Windows 7 to this drive...even though I wouldn't recommend it myself. I would however run Windows 7 PE from this external drive and for that go here and download this program:

http://reboot.pro/12427/

This will create a bootable CD, USB harddrive, and will boot to Windows 7 PE. A little more advanced but easy to do. Hope this helps.

 

[Night Hawk]

Welcome to SF! 11225e

If you are planning to install 7 directly to the external drive once made bootable it won't work! Windows 7 will not install to any usb hard drives or devices directly. You caninstall Windows from a usb drive or device however once made bootable or mounting an iso image.

For simply seeing the drive made bootable that can done having the 7 installation or upgrade media in the optical drive and opening a command prompt to use the DiskPark tool. But you would end up with a bootable drive lacking an OS.

 

[11225e]

I guess I was not clear. I do not wish to INSTALL an OS, just make the USB drive bootable. But when I try to, using a tool or not, I get the error I wrote.

 

[Orbital Shark]

Hi,

If you follow the instructions below it should work, I've tried it myself

How To make Bootable USB

   Note

No 3rd party software required, it's all controlled from within Windows

 

[11225e]

it should.

 

[Night Hawk]

It does! I've had to make some usb install keys without a 3rd party app for some repairs. You will need the 7 dvd in the drive however when cd(change directory) to the boot folder and run the bootsect.exe. That will write the boot code to the drive.

 

[11225e]

Ok, let's start again. I did this:

1. Insert USB harddrive to the system and backup all the data from the USB
2. Open elevated Command Prompt. To do this, type in CMD in Start menu search field and hit Ctrl + Shift + Enter. Alternatively, right click on Command Prompt and select run as administrator.
3. Enter the following commands:
DISKPART
LIST DISK
4. The LIST DISK command will show the disk number of your USB drive.
5. Enter the following commands:
SELECT DISK 1 (Replace DISK 1 with your disk number)
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
SELECT PARTITION 1
ACTIVE
FORMAT FS=NTFS
ASSIGN
EXIT
(navigate to bootsect.exe)
BOOTSECT.EXE/NT60 E: (“E” is USB drive)
6. Copy Windows DVD folder to USB drive

Then I received the following response in cmd window:

Updated NTFS filesystem bootcode. The update may be unreliable since the
volume could not be locked during the update:
Access is denied.
Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes.

does this mean that it worked or not - hard to tell?

 

[SIW2]

To install from a USB HD.

Use windows 7/Vista disk management to create a new Primary partition on the usb HD - 12gb is plenty - create new simple volume - format as fat32 or ntfs.

Mark the new partition Active.

Mount your 7 iso - copy and paste the contents to the new partition.

Restart pc and boot from the usb HD -using bios one time pop up boot menu.

No need for command prompt.

 

[Night Hawk]

Once you type the exit command you don't close up the command prompt but leave that open. For the next step you will still be using the command prompt as long as you have a 7 or even Vista dvd since they share the same type of bootloader.

With the dvd in the optical drive type D: or other drive letter in at the prompt and press enter to switch to the optical drive. You follow that with "cd boot" = change from root to boot folder directory and press enter again.

Once at the "drive letter\boot\" prompt type "bootsect.exe /nt60 E:" and press enter one more time. And right away you did see the "Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes" confirmation and ended up back at the dos type prompt back where you started. The drive should now bootable since the confirmation was displayed.

From there you simply copy the entire contents over to the external drive and boot from it. All this was seen to in one session. I've done this with flash drives which work on the same boot option for selection of usb hard drive.

In fact since the drive was already partitioned and formatted to NTFS all you should have had to do was browse to the 7 dvd and run the "bootsect.exe /nt60 e:" command and called it a day as long as the drive was empty not having any files present on it. The need for running DiskPart is when you either need to clean a drive or have one raw or seeing exFat, Fat 16/32, or another file system present on it.

 

[11225e]

so you are telling me that I need to execute bootsect twice, once from the OS I used to boot with and once from an OS in the optical drive. this makes no sense to me - especially if the OS on the CD is the one I used to install on on the notebook computer I am working with - you know - same exact bootsect.exe. but, ok, I'll try it if that's what you mean...

 

[11225e]

I re-executed bootsect and got:

Updated NTFS filesystem bootcode. The update may be unreliable since the
volume could not be locked during the update:
Access is denied.
Bootcode was successfully updated on all targeted volumes.

 

[SIW2]

It seems you are on the wrong track .

You don't need to use bootsect at all if you formatted the partition with windows 7 disk management.

What is on the drive you wish to boot?

How are you trying to boot ?

Did you see my previous post

 

[Night Hawk]

When you are using DiskPart you only need to run the command once and wait to see if the confirmation message appears. The drive should then be found bootable on it's own since that simply writes the boot code.

Simply partitioning and formatting a drive to NTFS and marking the volume active won't see it made bootable on it's own. And even when the boot code is written that would have to be pointed to a boot loader or initialize the setup files for the 7 dvd contents.

Without having any mbr/bootsector entries you would simply end up seeing a flashing dash in one of the upper corners of the screen.

 

[11225e]

Thanx for still sticking with me. I am impressed.
SIW2:
On the drive I am trying to boot from is a copy of Win 7 and some other files. This is the drive that I formatted using DISKPART then I also formatted it using disk management to see if that made any difference. In disk management (both times) it shows as Simple, Basic, Primary, NTFS, Active. What wrong track am I on?
Night Hawk:
I don't understand what you wrote. The USB drive is formatted with NTFS and there is only one partition - so it's primary. Doesn't the bootsect command make the disk bootable? Did I miss a step?

 

[SIW2]

Post a screenie of the contents of the usb hd.

 

[Night Hawk]

The DiskPart method does work for usb flash drives when you go to run the bootsect.exe file and enter the commands correctly. I used that method as well as a few 3rd party tools that write disk images to flash drives to see results there.

Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to test on 3.5" HDs as of yet however to find out where any problems would be seen. If you follow the steps to the letter the results may vary however. Others would simply elect to mount an iso image on the drive for installing 7 that way.

If you still end up not being able to get the 7 installer to run when booting from the drive the other option used for netbooks and laptops when an opticel isn't working or when going to MS for the iso purchase would be the usb install key. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2432-usb-windows-7-installation-key-drive-create.html

For getting a Vista laptops running again as well as running tests with several temp installs it can save a lot of time as well as free up your drive for other things. And now with SP1 avaiilable you could see the service pack along with various updates added in as well. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...ows-7-sp1-into-installation-dvd-iso-file.html