Making a bootable USB Stick Drive for Windows 7. Ok, I’ve seen a lot on this topic…and for the most part there is some confusion around exactly what this means and/or what this does. First of all, yes you can create a Windows 7/Vista install USB Stick drive that you can boot from (for the remainder of the this post I will use the term USB drive to refer to USB Stick Drive…technically they are not the same as a USB drive does not have to be a Stick form. I USB drive that I’m talking about is sometimes call a ‘Flash Drive’ or ‘Jump Drive’, but can also be a larger devices as those that WD has on the market which are in fact real hard drives wrapped in a small USB interface. USB Stick Drives are those small devices that are solid state and fit on your key chain).
Ok, back to what we are talking about…The bootable USB drive that most of the guides and Google searches pull up is really a Windows install image…not a running Windows 7/Vista device that all you have to do is pop it in and boot off of and then have full Windows 7/Vista running. No No NO…that is not what these are.
So what good is it? Well, the small pocket device is good for installing or Upgrading existing computers to Windows 7 or Vista without having to lug around a DVD/CD or transferring a 3Gb iso over the network.
Now that all of the air is out of your balloon… can one actually create and small bootable device that will load and run a Windows OS (Operating System)…well, yes, but there are caveats!
If in fact you want a Booting Windows Running OS on a small device that you just pop in your favorite hunk of tech…then you need to research something called Windows PE (PE stands for Preinstalled Environment). Ok, go google it… or start with:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd799308(WS.10).aspx
Yes, there are limitations (Gee wouldn’t you expect there to be). The key to understanding Windows PE is the understand that the full blown running Windows OS simply can not be ran from such a small slow device as a USB drive. Now maybe at some point we will get such a device like a ‘Jump Drive’ size disk for the eSata interface…that would work. To date I haven’t seen any…and then there’s the fact that not all computers even have an eSata port (which is an external? enhanced? Sata…basically eSata is a really fast hard drive interface…unlike USB).
So, do some reading on Windows PE and see if it’s worth the trouble…
~cse
cse
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