Installing Windows on USB flash drive?

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naddie

Weaksauce
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Aug 28, 2009
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Is it possible to install Windows 7 and/or Windows Server 2008 on a USB flash drive?


Speed is not an issue. I just don't like the idea of a physical media spinning 24x7, and don't want to spend the money on two SSD drives.

Basically it's for a file/printer server PC (Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard), and an HTPC-like server (Windows 7 Pro). Both have Drobos for mass storage so I don't need a large internal HDD for the main system.

The HTPC will just be for recording TV and serving media off a Drobo. It's got the TV tuners (4 of them). I'll just be using the XBOX 360 for the 10-foot GUI and streaming off the HTPC.

The other idea I have is to use SATA notebook drives - cheaper and less power consumption.
 
there is a sticky at the top as to install FROM a usb not TO a usb.
Subscribing to this because I would like to know as well.
 
No, you can't, because Windows (stupidly) differentiates between "Removable Devices" (like USB sticks) and "Hard Drives", even if they're removable! And Windows won't install to a "Removable Device". Sorry OP.
 
djBon2112 said:
No, you can't, because Windows (stupidly) differentiates between "Removable Devices" (like USB sticks) and "Hard Drives", even if they're removable! And Windows won't install to a "Removable Device". Sorry OP.
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It makes perfect sense; licenses are tied to machines. It's not "one license of Windows to use on all my machines", it's "one license to use on my machine".
 
I was hoping someone was sly enough to get around that, lol. Thanks for the replies.

I guess I'll look into reusing some old laptop HDDs I have.
 
Arainach said:
It makes perfect sense; licenses are tied to machines. It's not "one license of Windows to use on all my machines", it's "one license to use on my machine".
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Perhaps, but on a technical level it makes no sense, since they're both devices containing partitions and filesystems.

OP, if you just need portability for basic tasks (not gaming), you could try Linux. You can put Ubuntu on a 2gb flash drive with ease.
 
It's not for portability. It's just that I don't like the idea of having spinning media on 24/7. Plus they are uneccessary energy hogs if they are just going to idle most of the time.

I just want two low-power consumption PCs for serving needs. I was also hoping to run virtualbox on it, putting the virtual HDD on a real HDD (which is what I already have).

Both "servers" are already live. I just want to replace the system drive (80GB IDE drive for the file server, 250GB SATA for the HTPC server). Both are overkill since Wiindows Server 2003 (my current server OS) and Windows 7 (HTPC server) don't take up more than 10GB.
 
you could get a compact flash card + ide adapter. They're really slow for use with an OS though, i hear.

The adapters are inexpensive, as they are basically pin converters.

I havent used them for this, but it should show up as a (small) hard drive.
 
ambientZ said:
you could get a compact flash card + ide adapter. They're really slow for use with an OS though, i hear.

The adapters are inexpensive, as they are basically pin converters.

I havent used them for this, but it should show up as a (small) hard drive.
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Way ahead of you. :) I have 2 CF to SATA adapters lying around - bought them for $10/ea at ebay a long time ago for this purpose, but found out CF prices were still pretty high.

Today, I saw that Fry's was selling 8GB CFs for under $20. I bought two so I can RAID them for 16GB. While Windows 2008 and 7 should fit, I dunno if the installer would stop because of Microsoft's free disk space check.

I still asked about the USB because it seems much simpler and cheaper to have a 32GB USB flash drive connected to an internal USB header on the mobo.
 
naddie said:
Way ahead of you. :) I have 2 CF to SATA adapters lying around - bought them for $10/ea at ebay a long time ago for this purpose, but found out CF prices were still pretty high.

Today, I saw that Fry's was selling 8GB CFs for under $20. I bought two so I can RAID them for 16GB. While Windows 2008 and 7 should fit, I dunno if the installer would stop because of Microsoft's free disk space check.

I still asked about the USB because it seems much simpler and cheaper to have a 32GB USB flash drive connected to an internal USB header on the mobo.
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The recomended for both is about 10 GB so you should be fine.
 
It works! I am testing it on my test rig of course. Read speeds are decent - 24 MB/sec (both of them RAID0). Individually, they are about 14.5 MB/sec read, so there's a lot of overhead when going to RAID0 it seems.

Write speeds is horrible though. Averages 5MB/sec. Indiviudually, they do 10MB/sec average, so write speeds actually went down. I'm using the motherboard's builtin Sil 3512 RAID controller and 8kb stripe size. I wonder if I should increase stripe size, since flash memory doesn't do so well with small read/write requests. Maybe up it to 16kb.
 
naddie said:
It works! I am testing it on my test rig of course. Read speeds are decent - 24 MB/sec (both of them RAID0). Individually, they are about 14.5 MB/sec read, so there's a lot of overhead when going to RAID0 it seems.

Write speeds is horrible though. Averages 5MB/sec. Indiviudually, they do 10MB/sec average, so write speeds actually went down. I'm using the motherboard's builtin Sil 3512 RAID controller and 8kb stripe size. I wonder if I should increase stripe size, since flash memory doesn't do so well with small read/write requests. Maybe up it to 16kb.
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Given what you are using them for I would just bear the pain and get it set up, disable page, set up small ramdrive to dump TEMP folders into and forget about it. Once the system is set up it's more like a firmware that doesn't get writes to.
 
Hypernova said:
Given what you are using them for I would just bear the pain and get it set up, disable page, set up small ramdrive to dump TEMP folders into and forget about it. Once the system is set up it's more like a firmware that doesn't get writes to.
Click to expand...

I think I'll do just that. Thanks everyone.
 
It did NOT work. :( After the set up was done, it did not want to boot. Just wanted to update followers of this thread.

I have a 4GB microdrive CF that I was able to install XP on, so in theory, it should work. Maybe the cards need to support ATA modes to work. I just can't install Windows 7 or 2008 on the 4GB CF since it may be too small.

I gave up and bought an OCZ 60GB Vertex SSD for my server. 30GB partition is pretty good for the OS, and the other 30GB is enough for the VM's virtual HDD file.

As for the HTPC, I am running a single internal 2TB HDD partitioned up for the OS and Data (recorded TV and media).

Thanks everyone!
 
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