How to create a flash drive version of Windows

My laptop’s DVD-ROM drive recently gave up. Discs wouldn’t read or even spin up from it, and its laser kept making a wheen-wheen noise whenever the computer booted. I attached an internal DVD-ROM drive by way of a USB-to-SATA bridge. That worked for a while – but then it too quit.

This was aggravating because, after several software installs and changes to the system, I needed to mop down the computer and reinstall Windows 7. Without an optical drive, this would be a chore, so instead I created a bootable flash drive version of the Windows 7 installation media.

The process isn’t as tough as it may seem. To get started, you need the following items:

• A flash drive of at least 4 GB.
• A running installation of Windows 7 to which you have administrator access.
• A copy of the Windows 7 installation media.
• If your copy of Windows 7’s install media is in the form of an .ISO file, you’ll need a copy of the free, open source 7-ZIP archive utility.

That’s it –now just follow these steps to create the flash drive:

1. Go to an available Windows 7 system.
2. Mount the flash drive, and make sure Windows recognizes it as a device. If this is the first time you’ve used the drive in that particular installation of Windows, it may take a moment to be recognized.
3. Open an elevated command prompt, and type diskpart to launch the DISKPART utility. This is the command-line, disk-partitioning tool created to replace fdisk from previous versions of Windows (and DOS before it).
4. In diskpart, type list disk to obtain a numbered list of all the currently mounted disks in the system. The flash drive you plugged in will not have any special identifiers other than its size, so pay close attention. (It typically registers as the last drive in the list, but that’s not a universal rule.)
5. Type select disk # — with # as the number of the flash drive. For example, if your flash drive showed up as Disk 4, you’d type select Disk 4.
6. Type clean to remove any existing partition information from the disk. This is important because there may be partition information left over that might prevent the drive from working properly as a boot drive.
7. Type create partition primary to create a new, primary partition on the disk.
8. Type active to mark the current partition as bootable. This is extremely important. If the partition isn’t marked as bootable, no computer will recognize the drive as a bootable medium in the first place.
9. Type exit to leave diskpart.
10. Unmount the drive (right-click in Explorer and select “Eject”), unplug the drive, and then plug it back in. This step is optional, but it seems to help clear the system of any lingering incorrect information about the drive.
11. Right-click on the drive icon in Explorer and select Format. Use the following options: NTFS for the file system and 4096 bytes as the allocation unit size. Check the “Quick Format” option. If you’re not too sure about the quality of the drive, you can uncheck “Quick Format,” but the format process will take much longer. A volume label is not required, but it can be useful. (I just use “Win7.”)
12. Click Start to format the drive.
13. When the format operation is finished, insert your Windows 7 installation media. If you’re using an .ISO, use 7-ZIP to open the .ISO as if it were an archive, and copy the contents of the .ISO to a folder.
14. Copy the entire contents of the installation disk — exactly as-is — to the flash drive. This may take several minutes; refresh your coffee in the meantime.

15.       When the copy operation is finished, unmount the drive.

The resulting flash drive should boot on any system. If it doesn’t work, the drive you’re using may not support booting, or it has been configured to mount as a different kind of storage device than one recognized as a boot device.

Once booted, the installation process should proceed normally. Just make sure not to use the flash drive itself as a target for the install.(From what I’ve seen, Windows should prevent you from doing this anyway.) One convenient byproduct of having your Windows install media on a flash drive is that you can add other programs to the drive — like the Malicious Software Removal Tool — which you can run from the Windows PE (rescue environment). Plus, unlike a custom DVD-R, you can add or remove software from the drive without having to reburn it.

It may also be possible to use this technique on a boot or install processes to stall.

Also note that the exact method by which you enable USB booting varies widely between systems. With some of them, the boot device can be selected by pressing F12 at startup; with others, it needs to be set manually in BIOS beforehand.

Common Storage Configurations

Introduction

In today’s world everything is on computers. More specifically, everything is stored on storage devices which are attached to computers in a number of configurations. There are many ways in which these devices can be accessed by users. Some are better than others and some are best for certain situations; in this article I will give an overview of some of these ways and describe some situations where one might want to implement them.

Firstly there is an architecture called Directly Attached Storage (DAS). This is what most people would think of when they think of storage devices. This type of architecture includes things like internal hard drives, external hard drives, and USB keys. Basically DAS refers to anything that attaches directly to a computer (or a server) without any network component (like a network switch) between them.

Figure 1: Three configurations for Direct Attached Storage solutions (Courtesy of ZDNetasia.com)

A DAS device can even accommodate multiple users concurrently accessing data. All that is required is that the device have multiple connection ports and the ability to support concurrent users. DAS configurations can also be used in large networks when they are attached to a server which allows multiple users to access the DAS devices. The only thing that DAS excludes is the presence of a network device between the storage device and the computer.

Many home users or small businesses require Network Attached Storage (NAS). NAS devices offer the convenience of centrally locating your storage devices, though not necessarily located with your computers. This feature is convenient for home users who may want to store their storage devices in their basement while roaming about their house with their laptop. This feature is equally appealing to small businesses where it may not be appropriate to have large storage devices where clients or customers present. DAS configurations could also provide this feature, though not as easily or elegantly for smaller implementations.

Figure 2: Diagram of a Network Attached Storage system (Courtesy of windowsnas.com)

A NAS device is basically a stripped down computer. Though they don’t have monitors or keyboards they do have stripped down operating systems which you can configure, usually by connecting to the device via a web browser from a networked computer. NAS operating systems are typically stripped down versions of UNIX operating systems, such as the open source FreeNAS which is a stripped down version of FreeBSD. FreeNAS supports many file formats such as CIFS, FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, and iSCSI. Since FreeNAS is open source you’re also free to add your own implementation of any protocol you wish. In a future article I will provide more in-depth information on these protocols; so stay tuned.

Because NAS devices handle the file system functions themselves, they do not need a server to handle these functions for them. Networks that employ DAS devices attached to a server will require the server to handle the file system functions. This is another advantage of NAS over DAS. NAS “frees up” the server to do other important processing tasks because a NAS device is connected directly to the network and handles all of the file serving itself. This also means that a NAS device can be simpler to configure and maintain for smaller implementations because they won’t require a dedicated server.

NAS systems commonly employ RAID configurations to offer users a robust storage solution. In this respect NAS devices can be used in a similar manner as DAS devices (for robust data backup). The biggest, and most important, difference between NAS systems and DAS systems are that NAS systems contain at least one networking device between the end users and the NAS device(s).

NAS solutions are similar to another storage configuration called Storage Area Networks (SAN). The biggest difference between a NAS system and a SAN system is that a NAS device handles the file system functions of an operating system while a SAN system provides only block-based storage services and leaves the file system functions to be performed by the client computer.

Of course, that’s not to say that NAS can’t be employed in conjunction with SAN. In fact, large networks often employ SAN with NAS and DAS to meet the diverse needs of their network users.

One advantage that SAN systems have over NAS systems is that NAS systems are not as readily scalable. SAN systems can quite easily add servers in a cluster to handle more users. NAS systems employed in networks where the networks are growing rapidly are often incapable of handling the increase in traffic, even if they can handle the storage capacity.

This doesn’t mean that NAS systems are scalable. You can in fact, cluster NAS devices in a similar manner to how one would cluster servers in a SAN system. Doing this still allows full file access from any node in the NAS cluster. But just because something can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done; if you’re thinking of going down this path tread carefully – I would recommend implementing a SAN solution instead.

Figure 3: Diagram of a Storage Area Network (Courtesy of anildesai.net)

However, NAS systems are typically less expensive than SAN systems and in recent years NAS manufacturers have concentrated on expanding their presence on home networks where many users have high storage demands for multimedia files. For most home users a less expensive NAS system which doesn’t require a server and rack space is a much more attractive solution when compared with implementing a SAN configuration.

SAN systems have many advantages over NAS systems. For instance, it is quite easy to replace a faulty server in a SAN system whereas is it much more difficult to replace a NAS device which may or may not be clustered with other NAS devices. It is also much easier to geographically distribute storage arrays within a SAN system. This type of geographic distribution is often desirable for networks wanting a disaster tolerant solution.

The biggest advantage of SAN systems is that they offer simplified management, scalability, flexibility, and improved data access and backup. For this reason SAN configurations are becoming quite common for large enterprises that take their data storage seriously.

Apart from large networks SAN configurations are not very common. One exception to this is is in the video editing industries which require a high capacity storage environment along with a high bandwidth for data access. A SAN configuration using Fibre Channel is really the best solution for video editing networks and networks in similar industries.

While any of these three configurations (DAS, NAS, and SAN) can address the needs of most networks, putting a little bit of thought into the network design can save a lot of future effort as the network grows or the need arises to upgrade various aspects of the network. Choosing the right configuration is important, you need to choose a configuration that meets your networks current needs and any predictable needs of the near to medium term future.