Installing an operating system from a USB drive bring several advantages: USB drivers are small, USB drives transfer data quicker than CDs, and they are generally more convenient. In this guide, you’ll learn how to install Windows 7–or any operating system–from a USB thumb drive.
Preparing Your USB Drive
To prepare your USB drive, do the folllowing:
- Use a thumb drive that you don’t mind deleting everything from
- Press WINKEY+R to Open the Run dialogue (Start, type run, click run)
- Type diskpart and hit Enter (If you don’t have diskpart, get it here)
- Run the list disk command
- Run select disk 3 where the “3″ is the corresponding number of your USB drive
- Run clean
- Run create partition primary
- Run active to make the partition active
- Run format fs=fat32 quick to format the drive as Fat32
- Run assign to give the drive a letter
Putting Windows 7 Installation Files on a USB Drive
This guide will show you how to do put the Windows 7 Installation files on a USB drive; however, this method can be applied using an operating system’s installation files.
To put the operating system’s installation files on a USB drive, do the following:
Using the Install DVD
- Put the installation DVD in your DVD drive
- Open Computer, right click on the DVD drive and click Explore
- Select all the files (CTRL+A) on the DVD and copy them (CTRL+C)
- Paste (CTRL+V) the files on the previously-formatted thumb drive
Using an ISO Image
- Locate the ISO file
- Open the file with a utility capable of browsing ISO images (7 zip works well)
- Download 7zip and install it
- Right click the ISO file and select 7-Zip > Open Archive
- Extract the contents of the ISO to your previously formatted hard drive
Installing an Operating System from a Thumb Drive
To install an operating system from a thumb drive, follow this guide:
- Load the operating system installation files on to your thumb drive (see above)
- Shutdown your PC
- Turn on your PC and press F8/ESC (they key used to select your boot menu)
- Select USB drive (or similar description) and hit Enter
- Install Windows 7
If you need more help installing Windows 7, a comprehensive guide is available in Windows 7 - The Pocket Guide.
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4 Responses to Use a USB Key to Install Windows 7 (Or any OS)
Dani
Very handy I will sourly use this…
Joe Russell
Pretty interesting. Could be used for pretty much any OS you use a CD to install.
Beowülf
Schweet. I’ve been trying to find this kinda info some few months back. Now I’m definitely giving it a go!
thanks
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