How To Install Windows 7 Faster Using USB Flash Drive
Author: Raymond9 Sep
I’ve tried researching on how to install Windows XP from a USB flash drive before and when I finally managed to do it, the whole process is so unbearably slow that I thought I would NEVER install it from a USB flash drive. Recently there has been many articles about installing Windows 7 from USB flash drive and I’ve decided to give it another try and see if there is any improvement on the speed.
Installing Windows from USB has its advantage which is you don’t need to worry if the DVD drive cannot read the disc or if there is any scratches on the Windows installation DVD, and it is more convenient to carry around your USB flash drive rather than a DVD disc. Moreover, a lot of new compact small laptops or desktops doesn’t even have a CD/DVD drive. Other than that, you can even save useful software setups such as Firefox, Windows Live Messenger, 7-Zip, Orbit Downloader and etc into the USB drive so you can install them once Windows installation has been completed.
I will show you two ways (manual and automatic) on how to install Windows 7 using your USB drive.
Before we start, make sure you have at least a 4GB USB flash drive. Windows 7 installation files takes up around 3GB of space.
The manual way
1. Insert your USB flash drive.
2. Hit WIN+R, type cmd and click OK.
3. Type diskpart and hit ENTER
4. Type list disk, hit ENTER and identify the disk number for your USB flash drive. You MUST be very sure of this or else you’ll be formatting the wrong drive later on. If you have only one hard drive, then normally your USB flash drive will be disk 1.
5. Type select disk 1 and hit ENTER
6. Type clean and hit ENTER
7. Type create partition primary and hit ENTER
8. Type select partition 1 and hit ENTER
9. Type active and hit ENTER
10. Type format fs=fat32 and hit ENTER
11. Type assign and hit ENTER
12. Type exit and hit ENTER
13. Insert the Windows 7 installation DVD disc and copy everything from the DVD to your USB flash drive.
14. Boot up your computer with USB flash drive. You will need to go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. If you got it right, the Windows 7 installation should load from your USB flash drive.
The automatic way
There is a software called WinToFlash that does everything above automatically. All you need to do is run the program, set the location of the Windows 7 installation disc and the destination of your USB flash drive.
1. Download the latest version of WinToFlash
2. Extract and run WinToFlash.exe
3. Click the big check button to start Windows setup transfer wizard.
4. Click Next
5. Specify the locations of Windows files and USB drive then click Next. The Windows files path if the drive letter of your DVD drive and the USB drive is the drive letter of your USB flash drive.
6. Select “I Accepted the terms of the license agreement” and click Continue.
7. Click OK to start formatting your USB flash drive and the files will be automatically transferred from your Windows 7 install disc to your USB flash drive.
8. Click Next when finished copying and boot up the computer with USB flash drive. You will need to go into your BIOS and make sure it is set to boot from flash devices. If you got it right, the Windows 7 installation should load from your USB flash drive.
Your computer hardware specification plays a part on the time taken to install Windows. I managed to complete installing Windows 7 from USB flash drive with only 17 minutes and my desktop’s specification is Intel Pentium D 2.8GHz, 2GB ram, 7200RPM 160GB SATA hard drive and MSI 945P Platinum mainboard. When I time installing Windows 7 using DVD, it took 22 minutes. So on my desktop computer, it is 22% faster installing Windows using USB flash drive compared to DVD.
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43 Responses for "How To Install Windows 7 Faster Using USB Flash Drive"
great guide ray..i think it also can boot winxp and vista too
=)
raymond, can i install it on second or third partition? how?
would it be bootable?
i have slax on first partition so having it in a latter partition would be great…
could you also install windows xp using these instructions
Thanks Ray that is a good artikel.
i think the manual method will works for all windows~
Thanks Ray
thanks ray..it’s actually working for me,so thanks and keep up the good work..
Yet again, one of the best tips and utilities I have come across and lately most seem to be showing up here…..RAY you are the man!!!!….
)
the first methos is the best i tried of my 4gb usb installed windows rtm 7600 of it installed so fast!!!! really cool reccomend step 1 which is for expreienced users only
I used the first method on my netbook and it runs fiarly well (1GB RAM). You might need to format the flash drive with HP Tool if it won’t boot. Also you may need to install the boot loader to it.
This is a good article indeed.
Indeed another spoiler right before Microsoft release this as their official move.
A very good source from CNET once told that Microsoft is planning to sell Windows7 on USB for the benefit of NetBook users.
i prefer UnetBootin… easier
just few clicks and u r done flashing the ISO to the flash drive…
I think using the Ultra ISO Premium is more ‘automatic’
The Steps are:
1) Download the free UltraISO trial-http://www.ezbsystems.com/ultraiso/download.htm
2) Start UltraISO as administrator (if Vista)
3) “Burn” the iso image to the USB stick by following these steps
With UltraISO:
- Open the image of Vista/Win7 with UltraISO
- Under BOOTABLE tab choose WRITE DISK IMAGE
- Choose your USB stick under “Disk Drive”
- Choose a method (It’s recommended to use USB-HDD+)
- Press Write
- Make sure to change your BOOT order in BIOS to boot from your USB drive first
THAT IS ALL!!!
Great Job Raymond …[:D]
U did great job evety time
Thnks for Such great tips …[:)]
thanq raymond
This is really good to those who have windows 7 copy, does this works also on all windows vista.
USB ??? why !? when you can install directly from your hard-drive using vista/server setup dvd to start console mode and then setup from extracted W7 folder.
Work for me and it’s sure faster then usb.
just what i needed, thanks ray
@Niptech: Err.. because it’s portable?
Theres always somebody that has to ruin the fun. This tutorial is great!
another method faster than this
copy the installation disc to any folder on ur pc
and run the set up from there
@Raymond: portable is slower then HDD ofc.
If you could make a tutorial on how to reduce the setup size using VLITE and WAIK that would be great, making usb-stick installation would be much significant.
My intention wasn’t in any way to ruin the “fun” only to introduce you another way.
no need for any tool
just simple format as fat32
mount a win7 image to a virtual drive, copy all the filrs to the pen drive… and than just install
be sure to have a readyboost pendrive, otherwise is a pain in the as*s
thanks man , worked a treat!
Hehehe! it would also be nice if there is a FREE windows 7 download link. ;p
a good tutorial ….. great share man!!
Just curious: what letter is assigned to the hd partition when installing from the usb stick?
C or something else?
Wow nice to see the trick, really awesome…..i will try
usb drive not showing in cmd
Thanks Ray
I would like to ask a question here….
Are the detection rate of the antivirus*VIPRE Antivirus+ Antispyware* high?…..
I hope that my question will be attended…..
U DA MAN, works like a charm!
Niptech – I think you are going off too far for basic usage. I mean – this article might be handy for personal computer users, you know – standalone machines!
I just tried this and it worked 100%. You are a life saver man, I had wasted a lot of DVDs trying to burn windows 7, and I could never get them to work properly. I give this post 5 stars. Good work!!!
Excellent info – saved me as most of my systems refuse to boot from the Win7 DVD though they can boot the Vista DVD. Need to boot from the installation DVD since I’d like to wipe the HDs (non-upgrade install) as part of the install. Your manual way with Win7’s DiskPart I’d not seen previously – nice and easily done (fast too). I was working with the older HP USB Formater utility – to make a boot USB but its formating was taking 2x as long. Found your post during its formating, started a second USB drive with your method – its done and the files are copied – HP Formater is still chugging along…… Thanks Again!
I get an error when I enter diskpart in the cmd window:
C:\Documents and Settings\Michael>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 5.1.3565
Copyright (C) 1999-2003 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: PC
The disk management services could not complete the operation.
I got this from event viewer:
DCOM got error “The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. ” attempting to start the service dmadmin with arguments “/com” in order to run the server:
{4FB6BB00-3347-11D0-B40A-00AA005FF586}
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
BTW I’m running Windows XP home service pack 3. The only thing I can think of that might be causing it is that I have a lot of services disabled.
Is this user raymond a default user or it is the name of the person who is giving this example?
well this methos is wicked and works for the following systems ( only method 1):
xp
vitsa
windows 7
fedora
linux
and even mac (if converted fat 3)
How would we adapt method one with a customized versions of XP or VISTA or Win7 ? I.E. Already has the programs and drivers installed on the usb.
hi raymond, actually Microsoft has an ISO tool to install Windows 7 from USB drive.
http://store.microsoft.com/Help/ISO-Tool
hi ray can u plz compress win7(32bit) coz i hav limited bandwidth
Ref to installing Windows xp on USB and that its slow as the author said, actually this is not the case EXACTLy , it will be very slow if you pariton you thumb with fat32 but the case will be completely different if you format the thumb with fat16 and you will have 2GBs for you installation. I’m running it this way and installing Windows and the other applications with WPI takes less than 30 minutes (1.5 GBs of applications ) ,,,, so it is really much faster than using a CD drive though
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