Tech Hotfix

This has been a question of how to create make Windows 7 bootable using Flash drive or USB device. It has been another aspect that can this be possible. Can we install or boot Windows 7 installation using a pen drive. If yes then how to synchronize and make it work. The USB flash drive is one of the tool that has replaced the floppy disk drive as the best storage medium for transferring files, but it also has its uses as a replacement for CDs and DVDs. USB drives tend to be higher in capacity than disc media, but since they are more expensive, they cannot (yet) really be used as a replacement. There are reasons why you would, however, choose a USB device over a DVD disc, and bootable software is definitely one of them. Not only is it faster to copy data such as setup files from a USB drive, but during usage the access times are also significantly faster. Therefore, installing something like Windows 7 will work that much faster from a USB drive than from a DVD.

The Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool from Microsoft also helps to create the same with all added features. You need to add the ISO file to it and follow the further steps as it will ask to do and perform. You may need to erase the existing data on the drive for making a fresh copy of same. Other than this we can look out for much better way.

Here are the steps which you need to follow to make things work for you well. All you need to do is to follow the below:

• Make sure that you are logged in as Administrator this is because you will use Diskpart Utility
• Now using Diskpart you should make a bootable USB Flash Drive
• As this is been done insert the USB Flash drive that you want to use for image(It is essential that you check out that flash drive requires at least 5.5 GB of disc space for the “Windows Developer Preview with developer tools English, 64-bit (x64)”. The two Windows Developer Preview downloads that do not include developer tools will fit on a standard 4 GB USB flash drive.)

Now run the command prompt by typing cmd in the search box and hit enter. Then you need to run the Diskpart with following commands

1. LIST DISK : This shows all mounted disks. Find your USB flash drive in this list. You will need the disk.
2. SELECT DISK n : This is used to Select the disk that future commands will use. Replace "n" with the disk # for your USB flash drive
3. CLEAN : It erases all previous partition & volume information on the flash drive
4. CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY : Partitions the flash drive as one partition for the whole drive
5. SELECT PARTITION 1: Selects the new partition so future commands will operate on it
6. ACTIVE : Marks the new partition as active so the BIOS/UEFI can boot to it
7. FORMAT FS=NTFS QUICK : Formats the partition with NTFS. Do not format the USB flash drive with FAT32 because it will not work.
8. ASSIGN : It assigns a drive letter to the flash drive.
9. EXIT : It Exits DISKPART

• You need to now open the .ISO fle and save the contents to USB Flash drive. It can be done by following way:
• Burn the .ISO to a DVD and then copy the contents to the USB Flash drive.
• Use a program that can extract files from a .ISO (like WinZip 14.5 or later) to your hard disk or the USB flash.
• It is essential that you copy the files to a temporary directory on your hard disk, you can use XCOPY or ROBOCOPY, both of which are available in Windows 7.
• robocopy /mir

Example: robocopy d:\Win8Files e:\ /mir
 

      2. xcopy \*.* /E/Q/H

Example: xcopy d:\ Win8Files\*.* /E/Q/H e:\

• Now final step is that you need to make sure that BIOS is set to boot from USB. Then insert the USB and reboot the system. Setup should then be running. Alternatively, if you have an existing operating system, you can insert the USB, navigate to the \sources directory, and run setup.exe. You may need to do this if your machine can’t boot from USB or the machine hangs while loading setup.