How-To: Make a Bootable USB Key
Posted 10/08/09 at 09:00:00 AM by Norman Chan
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A bootable USB key is a convenient way to install operating systems on netbooks without optical drives, or carrying around a Live OS with you at all times. It especially makes sense if you're installing software on a machine that otherwise has no need for an optical drive, such as a Windows Home Server. Here’s a definitive guide to making a bootable USB key with either Vista or Windows 7 in just 9 steps.
1. Find and right-click the Windows Command Prompt in your Start Menu and choose to run it as an Administrator.
2. At the prompt, enter diskpart to launch Microsoft’s disk management utility. The command line should now read “DISKPART>”.
3. Type list disk to show a list of all disk drives. If your USB key is plugged into your PC, it should be listed here, along with other physical drives. Note the USB key’s disk number – you can pick it out by looking at the disk capacity.
4. Type select disk #, with the USB key’s disk number in place of #.
5. Type clean for the utility to clean the disk, which DiskPart will confirm.
6. Create a new bootable partition by entering create partition primary.
7. Choose this partition with select partition 1, and then mark it as active by typing active.
8. Format the key by inputting format fs=fat32. This should take a few minutes, and DiskPart will display a progress percentage.
9. Lastly, type assign to give this USB key a drive letter. Close the DiskPart program using exit.
You can now copy your OS’s installation files from the original DVD onto the key. We also recommend copying your hardware drivers onto the same key so the OS installation wizard can find them.
Not for XP users?
Submitted by 1337Goose on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 4:55pm
The XP version of diskpart doesn't pick up on USB drives?
~Goose
You will not be able to use
Submitted by nsvander on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 9:57pm
You will not be able to use this on a computer running WinXP, XP sees USB drives as removable drives, and not hard disks. Starting with Vista, MS changed how they were seen, and that is why you can use diskpart with Vista and higher but not XP
should work on xp cant see
Submitted by nsk chaos on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 1:25pm
should work on xp cant see why not....havent tried tho
Submitted by 1337Goose on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 2:02pm
I'm not sure. If you know a way to make it work on XP I'd love to hear.
I tried it and XP only shows me my two physical hard disks. It shows my USB as a volume, but I can't select it or operate on it.
~Goose
I did this to installe win 7
Submitted by killerxx7 on Fri, 10/09/2009 - 10:49am
I did this to installe win 7 beta way back whene it first came out,all went well but after the drive deid for some reason :/
Still its easyer then burning a dvd heh
For the life of me...
Submitted by mrvander on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 5:12am
... I can't fathom why people in these comments are recommending a third party application when a few simple command lines as instructed in this article work wonderfully.
Because I've had tons of
Submitted by Pentium 0 on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 6:30am
Because I've had tons of problems doing it the command line way in Vista. Administrator problems, random errors...ive never had it work once for me. But maybe I'm just terrible with command line stuff. The main thing though is that you dont have to memorize all these steps or keep refering to this artical. It does all the work for you.
Submitted by nsk chaos on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 1:27pm
vista just sucks imh =) and copy paste this article into a text file...cant be that hard can it? =)
Submitted by Richard Smith on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 12:40am
Some USB sticks just won't let you create a bootable file system. Something about the firmware on the stick. I have around 10 sticks and one will not boot. BTW: I use UNetbootin and recomend it!
Submitted by sheng zhang on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 10:36pm
my 2 gb sandisk doesn't show up after the command of listing disk
Submitted by nsvander on Sun, 10/11/2009 - 10:20am
Sandisk Drives with the U3 file system will not work. I have used this on both of my kingston drives with out a hitch. My SanDisk...fails everytime.
USB size
Submitted by Whudunit on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 9:06pm
How big should the USB key be, in order to do this?
Submitted by nsk chaos on Sat, 10/10/2009 - 1:28pm
big enough to fit the ISO file so a 1 - 2 GB flash(USB) drive should work
Question
Submitted by 010000100110010... on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 5:47pm
The command prompt won't let me format the USB.
Submitted by Edahsetin on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 6:33pm
Its easy to look over the last part of the first step. If you don't right click cmd.exe and run as administrator it won't let you do certain things.
Submitted by nsk chaos on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 5:41pm
this method is not limited to UNIX flavors...so basically u have more options to choose from
Submitted by Pentium 0 on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 5:46pm
Was that meant to be in reply to me? UNetbootin runs on both Linux and Windows.
Submitted by fnordfnord on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 7:06pm
Who said I want to make a bootable Linux Live USB drive??
Submitted by Pentium 0 on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 7:28pm
Uh I guess you didnt actually look at the page because you would have seen that you can choose from a list of linux isos OR browse to ANY iso on your pc and use that instead.
Submitted by fnordfnord on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 6:16am
You got me. Although most of what it supports aside Linux distros are actually available as bootable ISOs or USB drive versions already. :S
Submitted by nsk chaos on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 8:44pm
lol i didnt get to that part =)
Submitted by Pentium 0 on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 5:33pm
What part of UNetbootin (http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/) don't you understand? Soooo much easier to use.
Submitted by 1337Goose on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 6:32pm
UNetbootin is great, but I've never actually gotten it to work. Every time I make a LiveUSB, it's never able to boot correctly, and in the end I always end up with 6 partitions on my USB.
~Goose
Submitted by Pentium 0 on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 7:30pm
haha ouch. works fines for me. I just took a blank flash drive and booted into a os in a couple minutes. Of course you may have to tweak the bios to boot off a flash drive.
Submitted by 1337Goose on Wed, 10/07/2009 - 7:45pm
Yeah, UNetbootin boots, the rig is configured to boot from USB, but when it does boot it can never process the ISOs, and the operating system never loads. No matter what OS I use, it gets caught in a different error and dies.
~Goose
Submitted by Pentium 0 on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 6:33am
Do you mean by "No matter what OS I use," are you refering to the one on the flash drive or the one on the pc? Have you tried a different pc?
Submitted by 1337Goose on Thu, 10/08/2009 - 1:48pm
I've tried changing the host OS as well as the client OS, still no luck with UNetbootin. No matter however, I've managed to find other ways to achieve what I'm going for... When I find the time, I might try what's outlined in this article.
~Goose
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