Richard Parker's blog

I’ll show you how to create a bootable USB pen drive preloaded with Windows 7 installation media

If, like me, you’ve been eagerly awaiting the official release of Windows 7, you’ve no doubt wanted to install it on just about everything you have. We have a couple of Acer Aspire netbooks: fantastic, highly portable machines but, not fantastically powerful. Windows 7 boasts better performance on lower-spec hardware than it’s predecessor, so putting Windows 7 on the netbooks seems a logical choice.

It took about 12 minutes to install Windows 7 Ultimate from my USB pen drive to my Acer Aspire netbook

A while ago I blogged about how to install Windows Vista on your Aspire A150, so I thought now it would be a good time to update those instructions for Windows 7 users. Thankfully, the process is much more straightforward for Windows 7.

In case you’re wondering why you’d want to install from a USB pen drive, and not the DVD, consider these points:

1. Your laptop/netbook might not have an optical drive
2. Keeping the media on USB key is far handier than carrying the DVD around
3. Installations are typically much faster

Before you begin, you’re going to need:

• A spare USB key/pen drive
  • I used a ByteStor 8GB pen drive from Amazon. Just about any type of pen drive will work – but you will need one with a minimum of about 4GB.
• Your Windows 7 installation DVD (or the downloaded ISO from MSDN).
  • If you downloaded as an ISO, you’re going to need software to ‘mount’ the ISO first. See Virtual CloneDrive (free).

Step-by-step instructions

Ok, to get started – you need to make your pen drive ‘bootable’. That is, your computer needs to be able to recognise it as something it can boot from, and that’s not something yours will do without a little bit of prep work.

To get started, open a command prompt window ‘as administrator’, i.e. right click the command prompt icon and choose “Run as administrator”. Then perform the following steps:

• Plug in your USB pen drive. Make sure the contents are backed up to your hard disk somewhere, first. This process will erase the data on the flash drive.
• Type the following. After each line, press the RETURN or ENTER key to execute the command you have just entered:

  DISKPART
  LIST DISK
  

• Read the list on the screen. Figure out which ‘Disk ###’ is your pen drive. Look at the size of each drive listed – you should be able to figure it out by that. Note the disk number.
• Now, type the following. After each line, press the RETURN or ENTER key to execute the command you have just entered. Please note: it is extremely vital that you note the correct disk number from the previous step and enter it correctly below. If you have chosen the wrong drive, the drive you mistakenly chose will be rendered unusable.

  SELECT DISK (type your pen drive number here, without brackets)
  CLEAN
  CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
  SELECT PARTITION 1
  ACTIVE
  FORMAT FS=NTFS 
  

• Now, your pen drive begins to format. This took about 10 minutes on my 8gb drive.
• When formatting has completed, type:

  ASSIGN
  EXIT
  

Ok, that’s the hard work out of the way. At this point, you need your Win7 installation media. If it is on an ISO, mount it and make a note of the drive letter of your virtual drive. If it is a physical DVD, insert it into your computer and again, note the drive letter. Now, go back to the command prompt window and do the following:

• Type:

  CD [your drive letter]:\          --- For example: CD D:\
  CD BOOT
  BOOTSECT.EXE /NT60 U:             --- (replace 'U' with your USB pen drive letter)
  

That’s it – you’re done in the command prompt. All you have to do now is copy the entire contents of your Windows 7 installation media across to the USB drive. Quickest way to do this is to open My Computer, open your DVD/Virtual DVD, press CTRL+A and then CTRL+C. Now go back to My Computer, open your USB pen drive, and press CTRL+V. When the copying has finished, you’re left with a bootable USB pen drive that contains Windows 7.