It is possible to copy Windows 7 images to a USB flash drive and install Windows 7 onto a PC from it. This also applies to Server 2008 R2.
The simplest method is to copy the DVD files or extract an official ISO. It is also possible to use the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) to customize an image and deploy this via USB drive.
End users could use Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. Please ensure that the USB flash drive has a minimum capacity of 4GB.
Basic Overview
1. Using diskpart:
a. Clean USB drive
b. Create primary partition
c. Format partition as FAT32
d. Set partition as active
3. Boot PC from USB and install
Diskpart Commands
This process will prepare the USB drive for the Windows 7 disk files. The normal Windows GUI format tool will not suffice, as this does not use the active option to make the drive bootable.
Please note: This will delete all data on the drive, so ensure all files are backed up before continuing.
1. Open the command prompt
2. Type: diskpart
3. Type: list disk
4. This will show all connected disks, their disk numbers, connection status and disk size
5. Using the sizes, determine which disk is your USB drive and remember its disk number (ie Disk 2)
6. Type the following commands: (where X is the disk number of your USB drive)
a. select disk X
b. clean
c. create partition primary
d. select partition 1
e. active
f. format fs=fat32
g. assign
h. exit
Once the disk is formatted and prepared, you can copy the Windows 7 installation files onto the disk, whether this is from the DVD, ISO or a modified image.
