Installing Vista From A USB 2.0 Drive

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Here’s a handy guide to installing Vista from a USB flash drive. I haven’t tried this out yet but the author claims that it take less than half the time of a standard install.

Why would someone want to install a client OS from a thumb drive instead of a DVDROM or over the network? One reason: Performance. Installing Windows Vista from a high speed USB flash drive is in my experience the easiest & fastest way to complete a Windows Vista install.
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Will have to keep it in mind, as well as an eye out for an Apacer thumb drive deal :D
 
How long does it take to copy the fles from the DVD to the flash drive? You have to factor that in as well.

Obviously if the flash drive will be used for multiple installs then you only have to copy once and would make sense, but if the total time involved is close to installing off the DVD I am not sure if it really matters.
 
Why is he using such a pokey thumbdrive?

read speed of 25MBytes/sec. & a write speed-14MBytes/sec
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There are faster, cheaper ones out there, such as the Patriot Extreme 4GB drive, ~$43 AR from Newegg, 32 MB/s read, 26 MB/s write. That write speed will come in handy when transferring the Vista files to the thumbdrive.
 
It does indeed take a lot less time over a USB stick.

That said if you download the AIK as he suggests you can put an installation on a network share and image a PC from that. Will take about 6 minutes to build a Vista or XP Desktop. Very Nice for running test labs, especially with the driver control that's built in, all the automated deployment stuff is very very good, better than 90% of competitors can do when charging you a small fortune for it and this is free. I'd go as far as to suggest you use it for review purposes, its that easy and that powerful.

Microsoft seriously stepped up in that respect. Windows AIK and Windows Deployment Services ftw.

If anyone trys it and gets stuck give me a pm, I'm seriously evangelical on it (saved me months at work) so will be happy to help.
 
ir0nw0lf said:
Why is he using such a pokey thumbdrive?


There are faster, cheaper ones out there, such as the Patriot Extreme 4GB drive, ~$43 AR from Newegg, 32 MB/s read, 26 MB/s write. That write speed will come in handy when transferring the Vista files to the thumbdrive.
Click to expand...

I don't remember the article's date, but maybe it was a bit outdated? Or they didn't search very long for a fast thumb drive.
 
Unless you just really like the command prompt you can do all that via the GUI. Just format it from my computer, then copy over the contents of the DVD to the disk.
 
jnmunsey said:
How long does it take to copy the fles from the DVD to the flash drive? You have to factor that in as well.

Obviously if the flash drive will be used for multiple installs then you only have to copy once and would make sense, but if the total time involved is close to installing off the DVD I am not sure if it really matters.
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This is precisely the purpose of this. :)
There are some pretty peppy flash drives out there, too..

Also, an install image doesn't have to be the full size of a DVD, btw.. I would bet that a 2GB flash would be more than enough to 'slipstream' a full vista and office install. Heck, with winPE i've been doing XP + office off of 1GB drive for around a year.
 
wrong,fastest way to install windows vista is from the network...remote installation !!!
 
tshen_83 said:
wrong,fastest way to install windows vista is from the network...remote installation !!!
Click to expand...

That assumes you have a network setup at the 27 client locations that you are distributing new upgrades to that has the AIK on it.

The point is, there are instances where this will be more advantageous than disk based or network based installs
 
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