Hey guys, need a little help here. My roommate's computer is coming in the mail today and we're going to put it together when I get home from work. However, he did not have his bootable Win7 USB all figured out yet, so this morning I got to work making a 10gb partition on his external drive and put the Win7 ISO on it. I made the partition the active, primary partition, and formatted in both NTFS and Fat32. Both times I couldn't get the computer to boot from the USB drive. I'm fairly certain it's not the boot order, as I can specify what to boot from from a boot menu (just like most modern MOBOs these days). I don't think the drive is being recognized at all. I've almost always had this problem when I try to install Windows from a USB, but I eventually get it working through a bunch of trial and error/frustration. Can any of you think of something that I'm forgetting that will make this process click? Do you have a better way of making a bootable partition on an external HDD? Thanks!
I just put the ISO on the external HDD. From what I'm reading now it seems I need to extract all the files from the ISO onto the USB, correct? I'm reading this guide here: http://www.davescomputertips.com/2011/08/how-to-create-a-bootable-windows-7-usb-flash-drive/, and there are a lot of CMD prompt lines. Do I actually need to do these steps when Win7 has the 'manage disks' partition manager?
What do you want to do exactly? Install Windows 7 FROM external HDD or install Windows 7 ON that HDD ? If you want to install Windows 7 FROM external HDD then you should be able to make it bootable with WinToFlash ( it works with USB flash drives, should work with USB external HDDs too ). It wont work if you just copy the ISO file on the external HDD and set it as first boot device.
Yes, I'm trying to install Win7 FROM a partition on an external USB HDD. So, I copy the contents of the ISO onto the partition, then use WinToFlash to make it bootable? Bada bing? That's all?
No no no. Don't do that. I'll try to explain step by step: 1. Install WinToFlash 2. Mount your Win 7 ISO with CD/DVD emulation software ( magic disk, daemon tools, your choice ) 3. Start WinToFlash and click on "Windows Setup Transfer Wizard" 4. Click next 5. For "Windows Files Path" - click select and pick the virtual CD/DVD rom drive in which the Win 7 ISO-file is mounted 6. For "USB drive" - click select and pick your external HDD 7. Click next - wait for the process to finish and you should be good to go. edit: This procedure WORKS with USB flash drives, it SHOULD work with external USB HDD. If it doesn't, just find ~8GB USB flash drive. Hope that helps.
Thanks for the step by step - this process will work for a partition on a HDD, correct? I do not want to format the entire external and have it bootable, only my small 10gb partition.
I've never tried it but it should work, just choose the correct drive letter ( the small partition ) @ step 6.
If this method only works for a standalone USB flash drive, I've got problems as I do not have one handy. Can anyone give me an equally simple step by step for the same procedure, but for a partition on an external HD? EDIT: Will try this method, thanks!
This tool should work as well, it will copy the ISO to the USB drive and make it bootable. http://wudt.codeplex.com/
OR just use the official microsoft tool, although again will only work from a flash drive, but it is by far the easiest, takes like 3 clicks in total: http://download.cnet.com/Windows-7-USB-DVD-Download-Tool/3000-18513_4-10972600.html
Does anyone have any advice more specific to my situation - IE, using a partition on an external HDD rather than a flash drive?
WinToFlash will allow you to boot from your external hard drive. Follow steps described by " johnny_walker " http://wintoflash.com/home/en/
This is not only misleading, it is also DANGEROUS and WRONG, as I found out the hard way. Using wintoflash i attempted to create a bootable partition on an external HDD - 500gb hdd, with two partition part 1 - 450GB, part 2 - 8gb (with the intention of booting windows installation files). It correctly formated part 2, but doing that, erased the ToC of the entire HDD, meaning that i no longer had part 1, with 450GB of data UNAVAILABLE. It took me some reading around, and after trying 5 different partition recovery softwares, i found one that worked, and was able to recover the part1 450 gb partition. For anyone that has tried this, and needs to reverse, the name of the software is - active@ partition recovery. This thread created a huge mess for me, and took me some hours to recover, so I thought i'd post for anyone that reads this and decides to try - a friendly warning . Regards!
