HOWTO: Install Windows Vista from a high speed USB 2.0 Flash Drive
17 replies, posted
WHY INSTALL FROM USB FLASH DRIVE?
Why would someone want to install a client OS from a thumb drive instead of a DVDROM or over the network? One reason: Performance. Installing Windows Vista from a high speed USB flash drive is in my experience the easiest & fastest way to complete a Windows Vista install. This is much faster than using a DVD, gigabit ethernet, or possibly even some external USB 2.0 hard drives, due to differences in access speed & transfer rate. To put this into perspective, y'know how installing Windows on a Virtual PC virtual machine from an .ISO CD image is really, really, really fast? Imagine something roughly just as fast, except for doing installations of the OS on to actual workstations.
STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS
Here's some step-by-step instructions on how we do this, some of which was adapted from Josh's instructions, again, kudos to Josh.
1. Acquire an ultra-fast USB 2.0 flash drive
The drive I and my coworkers recommend is the Apacer 4GB Handy Steno USB Flash Drive HT203, 200X Hi-Speed USB 2.0. It's the fastest USB 2.0 Flash Drive that we've found - it has a read speed of 25MBytes/sec. & a write speed-14MBytes/sec and also works great as a ReadyBoost cache.
Incidentally, once you've got Windows Vista up and running, you may want to consider getting an ultra-fast SDFlash card, installing it into your laptop or desktop, and leaving it there as a ReadyBoost cache. Why? It can't hurt and they're so cheap that it's worth getting. I personally got a SDFlash card for every one of my machines - the A-DATA 2GB Secure Digital Memory Card, 150X Turbo SD Card has a read speed of more than 22.5MB/s and a write speed of more than 15MB/s.
2. Format the Flash Drive
Run CMD.EXE and type the following. Note: This set of commands assumes that the USB flash drive is addressed as "disk 1". you should double check that by doing a list of the disks (type "list disk") before cleaning it. If you have multiple hard drives, like an SDFlash drive or a Multibay drive, you could end up wiping your second drive using this command.
(This was a warning that Josh added to his post along with the following commands that I copied from him, so kudos to Josh)
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
3. Copy Windows Vista's DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive
Simply issue the following command to start copying all the content from the Windows Vista DVD to your newly formatted high speed flash drive.
* xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\
And that's it. Boot up the machine, have it boot off the USB drive, and watch how fast the installation completes. If you thought Windows Vista installed quickly before then let's see how you like it now. The slowest part of the install will probably be the computer waiting for you to type in information in the setup fields, and even that can be automated using the Windows Automated Installation Kit.
[quote]You can get them from $56.99 each[/quote]
No thank you.
[quote]You can get them from $56.99 each[/quote]
No thank you.
Does Readyboost actually do anything? also:
[quote]You can get them from $56.99 each[/quote]
No thank you.
Readyboost is useless unless you only have like 256 MB of RAM.
[quote]You can get them from $56.99 each[/quote]
No thank you.
[QUOTE=]You can get them from $56.99 each[/QUOTE]
Thanks...NOT.
c-c-c-c-combo breaker
Good tutorial but...
[QUOTE=The Scatman;16650151]You can get them from $56.99 each.[/QUOTE]
No thanks.
I'm pretty shure gigabit would be faster.
[editline]08:28PM[/editline]
Also, this is a software that does it automatically.
[url]http://www.askvg.com/a-bootable-usb-utility-to-create-bootable-usb-drive-to-install-windows-vista-server-2008-and-7/[/url]
Or you just install it from CD like people have been doing since Windows NT.
I've installed windows XP on a flash drive before( ON a flash drive, not FROM) it's also bootable from most computers.
To my suprise, a 4GB Class-II SD card from SanDisk is significantly faster than a 8GB DataTraveler flash drive by Kingston.
[QUOTE=nubcakez;16661803]I've installed windows XP on a flash drive before( ON a flash drive, not FROM) it's also bootable from most computers.
To my suprise, a 4GB Class-II SD card from SanDisk is significantly faster than a 8GB DataTraveler flash drive by Kingston.[/QUOTE]
How did you do this?
You can format the flash drive to NTFS and it will work too.
[QUOTE=Dr Egg;16667322]You can format the flash drive to NTFS and it will work too.[/QUOTE]
You don't want to do that unless you have files above 4 GB in size.
Thanks for the copypasta without listing a source
[url]http://www.ditii.com/2007/03/01/howto-install-windows-vista-from-a-high-speed-usb-20-flash-drive/[/url]
Isn't plagiarism great
[QUOTE=ThatDamnGrei;16674841]Thanks for the copypasta without listing a source
[url]http://www.ditii.com/2007/03/01/howto-install-windows-vista-from-a-high-speed-usb-20-flash-drive/[/url]
Isn't plagiarism great[/QUOTE]
I found it here:
[url]http://kurtsh.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!DA410C7F7E038D!1665.entry[/url]
:buddy:
haha he even gave credit to that josh guy
I need to find a way to install Windows 2000 from a USB stick.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.