Why is Whaat is Microsoft thinking? 6.35 GB Win SBS image

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I'm in the process of downloading Windows SBS Standard from a Microsoft site where my company has a subscription. The image is bigger than a standard DVD.

You and I know that we can load the image onto a thumb drive,and install from there. Does Microsoft really think that most people know that also? Why didn't they simply do a Volume 1 and a Volume 2?
 
DVD5, standard single layer, 4.7GB capacity (looks like 4.37GB in Explorer), the most common type of DVD media

DVD9, standard dual layer, 8.5GB capacity (looks like 7.97GB in Explorer), more expensive obviously (and more prone to damage) but obviously more storage (not precisely twice as much, however)

As time goes by we'll see more and more distributed content on dual layers. Aside from retail movies that almost always come on dual layer media, games are the second most popular thing to use dual layer media in mass quantities.

Hell, Portal 2 just came out and that's distributed (I think) in retail boxes on 2 dual layers, that's a first. If it's not, then it's on 3 single layers since the game's content is about 10.5GB total.

Still not that much really: X-Plane (a flight simulator) with the full - and I do mean the full scenery data discs is like 10 dual layer DVDs, about 90GB of data (that uncompresses to over 130GB when installed). Pretty amazing stuff...

A decade from now we'll still be looking back at this stuff the way we still look at floppies. Technology improves, data storage capacity increases, new storage mediums appear, etc. Someday in the future we'll be storing exabytes on devices similar to USB "sticks" nowadays... or even smaller.

(and don't even get me started on single layer dual sided and dual layer dual sided DVD media either...) :D
 
probably not physically much smaller, we have a tendancy of loosing flash drives, as it is :p
 
Falcon_CMH said:
Umm thumb drives are the only way to go anyway they are way way faster
Click to expand...

I wish this was the standard... but you can't just "burn" an ISO image to a USB stick. I wish it was that easy. Then there's the hit and miss support of being able to boot off USB. Some motherboards support it, some don't.

They should have really split that into two images. Dual layer DVDs cost a fortune last time I checked.
 
^sure you can, it's called extracting the files from the ISO and running the setup application from the USB drive......

I use the SD cards as they are faster than most thumb drives some of them push upwards of 20MB sec. I have a MS Pro Duo card that reads and reads at a sustained 16MB/sec
 
Red Squirrel said:
I wish this was the standard... but you can't just "burn" an ISO image to a USB stick. I wish it was that easy. Then there's the hit and miss support of being able to boot off USB. Some motherboards support it, some don't.

They should have really split that into two images. Dual layer DVDs cost a fortune last time I checked.
Click to expand...

any motherboard made in the last 3-4 years supports USB booting, if it doesnt it is some no name piece of crap.

and yes, you can make ISO load from USB.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
^sure you can, it's called extracting the files from the ISO and running the setup application from the USB drive......

I use the SD cards as they are faster than most thumb drives some of them push upwards of 20MB sec. I have a MS Pro Duo card that reads and reads at a sustained 16MB/sec
Click to expand...

How do you get it to boot? The files have to be on a specific location and all that, it's not as easy as just copying the files. Often there is special "boot" information written to a specific location on the disk.

If there's a universal way to make this work with anything, I'd love to know, I hate having to burn physical media when I could just keep it on my network.
 
jeremyshaw said:
for Vista/S2008r1 and above, most discs come with the bootsect utility...
Click to expand...
Yeah, but he asked about booting a SD card. I know it can work, but it usually doesn't.

To boot from a SD card he may need to use a SD to USB adapter, one known to support booting.
 
Red Squirrel said:
They should have really split that into two images. Dual layer DVDs cost a fortune last time I checked.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure if you mean the burner or the media, but a Dual Layer Burner is about $20 on New Egg and the media, while more expensive than standard DVDs, don't exactly cost a fortune at $28 for a stack of 50. I'd rather have the ISO go on a single disk rather than two lower capacity disks.
 
griffinhart said:
I'm not sure if you mean the burner or the media, but a Dual Layer Burner is about $20 on New Egg and the media, while more expensive than standard DVDs, don't exactly cost a fortune at $28 for a stack of 50. I'd rather have the ISO go on a single disk rather than two lower capacity disks.
Click to expand...

As the OP, I have to apologize a bit for the weird title. After I wrote out the posting, I went back and changed the title, but I guess I wasn't careful enough. :rolleyes:

As a "takeaway" from this thread, I think that several issues emerge:

1. We need a "KISS" way to "burn" an ISO or other bootable image onto a USB. The current approaches are far too hit-or-miss.

2. There is always going to be a tradeoff between the latest, highest capacity storage media and what is currently popular in the installed base of users.

I don't mean to close off this thread. All this discussion is very interesting.:D
 
I have an easy solution, request a media kit from Microsoft,

Yeah, its that easy, and you get it in a day or two
 
Here are two easy ways to make a USB boot disk for Installing:

Easy to use tool: http://wintoflash.com/download/en/

Manual way (for techies):
Insert a 4gb usb drive or higher in your system that you're ready to format and from an elevanted command prompt do the following:

diskpart
list disk (match your USB disk capacity to determine disk# for the next line)
select disk x (x = disk# from previous line)
clean (clears partition information from the selected disk above including drive letter)
create partition primary
select partition 1
active (makes partition bootable)
format fs=fat32 quick
assign (re-assigns a drive letter to the USB drive)
list volume (this is optional but it will help for the last command if you don't know the re-assigned drive letter)
exit

With your installation disk inserted or your iso mounted, use the assigned drive letter from above and use the following:

xcopy x:\*.* /s/e/f z:\ (x = installation source drive, z = assigned USB drive letter)
 
if ti has to boot, above, otherwise applications usually dont need tobe bootable so just extract the files from the ISO or just install something like Daemon tools and mount the ISO from the drive and run it that way.
 
Yeah, dual-layer DVDs are more common. 99% of Xbox 360 games, PC games, and movie DVDs come on Dual-Layer DVDs.

If you buy them in bulk they are still pretty cheap. Looking online now it's $40 for a 100pack of dual layer DVDs so only 40c per disk.
 
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