Creating A Bootable USB Flash Drive

As a developer I often find it useful to be able to quickly set up a new machine. I find the best way to do so is to install Windows from a  bootable USB flash drive. I find a flash drive to be more readily available and much easier to carry around then a DVD not to mention the read times are many times faster. The steps needed to get this going couldn't be easier.

1. Prepare Flash Drive

With the help of our old friend diskpart we can easily ready the drive for booting.

1. Open the command prompt.
2. Start diskpart

   C:\>diskpart

3. Type list disk to ensure we have the correct disk to clean

   DISKPART> list disk

   Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt -------- ------------- ------- ------- --- --- Disk 0 Online 186 GB 0 B Disk 1 Online 3831 MB 0 B

4. My disk is addressed as Disk 1 in this case so the next command is select disk 1

   DISKPART> select disk 1

5. clean

   DISKPART> clean

6. create partition primary

   DISKPART> create partition primary

7. select partition 1

   DISKPART> select partition 1

8. active

   DISKPART> active

9. format fs=fat32

   DISKPART> format fs=fat32

10. assign

    DISKPART> assign

11. exit

    DISKPART> exit

2. Copy DVD to Flash Drive

My DVD is in drive d:\ so I will use xcopy to copy the files from d:\ to my flash drive in e:\

C:\>xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\

3. Ensure BIOS on target machine set to boot from USB

Since BIOS menus vary I cannot go into the details of setting up your computers BIOS to boot from USB. Typically you can enter the BIOS by hitting Delete, F1, or some other key at the beginning of the boot process. Find the boot order portions and set the USB to be the first item in the boot order.

4. Install Windows

Insert the USB flash drive and restart the system. It should boot from the USB drive and begin the setup process.

Abbreviated steps from above:

1. diskpart
2. select disk 1
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit
10. xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\

Links: xcopy Documentation, DiskPart