---
title: "Delayed Post: How I Installed Windows 7 From USB HDD"
url: "http://andrewbolster.info/2009/07/delayed-post-how-i-installed-windows-7-from-usb-hdd/"
date: "2009-07-13T08:49:40Z"
tags: ["Laptop","Linux","SSH","Storage","USB","Windows","Lenovo"]
categories: ["Instructional"]
---

As was noted in my [LENOVO ROCKS](?p=151) post, I recieved a virgin hard drive for a laptop with no disk drives.

This is a problem that has been [long solved in Linux Distros](http://www.google.com/search?q=linux%20install%20from%20USB&hl=en&safe=off&num=100&output=search&tbs=tl%3A1&tbo=1) but is not so good for Windows, but i did find [this brilliant guide by Sandip](http://www.blogsdna.com/2016/how-to-install-windows-7-from-usb-drive-without-windows-7-iso-dvd.htm) from earlier this year, i just wanted to point out a few difference that i made to the process that i think make it slightly more transparent whats going on.

1. Get a USB drive > 4GB
2. Use The Disk Managment pane in Computer Managment (Control Panel > Administrative tools)
3. Find your drive and right-click > Format the partition as NTFS
4. Once its formatted, right click it again and ‘Mark Partition as Active’
5. Use a image mounter such as [WinCDEmu](http://wincdemu.sysprogs.org/) to mount the Windows 7 image
6. Drop into a cmd prompt and navigate to the drive where the Window7 image is mounted, cd to ‘boot’ and execute ‘bootsect /nt60 X:’ where X: is the drive letter the target partition is mounted on.
7. Copy the contents of the mounted Windows 7 image to ‘X:’
8. Reboot and if you dont know how to boot from a USB drive, you probably arn’t reading this, [but if not…](http://lmgtfy.com/?q=boot%20from%20usb)

I know  there are alternative methods for doing this in Linux, but since i didnt use them in this instance, i cant comment on them.

FYI: Windows 7 is now my full time OS, and frankly im suprised; Theres a few things I miss, like a nice easy command line networking, SSH built in, a decent X11 server, but for a  all round notes/documentation/lil-bit-o-code machine, the Tableting pros few  out-weigh the cons. E.G [The wonderous marvelous stupendous Math Input Panel that outputs in MathML!](http://www.gottabemobile.com/2008/10/29/windows-7-math-input-panel-screenshots/)