Installing Windows Server 2008 from a USB Flash (Pen) Drive

Windows Server 2008 Media only comes in a DVD. The reason is probably that it is over 3GB in size, and most machines would have a DVD drive these days.

But a slim DVD may not always be present in a rackmount server. In my case several of the servers don't have a DVD Drive.

Now with a recent BIOS, you could connect an external DVD Drive and boot from it, but having a Flash drive plugged in and install from it is a easier, and faster option. New to Windows 2008 setup is the ability to load RAID drivers from a media other than a floppy drive. So you could put the required RAID drivers and the Windows 2008 Setup all on one flash drive and install from it.

There was no confirmation from Dell tech support that it would be possible on a PowerEdge 2850. The first generation of 2850 came out over 3 years ago, so I was curious if the BIOS would support booting from a USB Flash drive and Windows 2008 would install on it.

The trick is to make a Flash drive bootable with a FAT32 partition, and copy all installation files from the DVD to the Flash Drive. Now setup the server BIOS to use a USB Drive as the boot drive, if available.

All went well with this installation and I had a Windows 2008 R2 installed on this server fairly quick. I think the actual installation took less then half hour.

Of course, quite bit of research took place prior to my attempt, specially in search for a confirmation that anyone has been successful doing it.

To make a flash drive bootable, I used the diskpart.exe Utility. Diskpart is a command line Utility and it is not available in any of the Home Editions of XP or Vista. I found it on XP Pro, Vista Business, and Windows 7 Professional. Before you start, make sure the USB drive is plugged in, and find out the drive's serial number with DiskPart. At Command Prompt, type diskpart <enter>, followed by: list disk. This will give you a list of disks and their serial number. Identify the Flash Drive and note the serial number.

Here is the command Here is the sequence of commands that makes the Flash drive bootable:

1. diskpart
2. select disk <diskserial>
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1
6. active
7. assign
8. exit

Now copy all files from the Windows 2008 Setup DVD on to this Flash Drive. If you need RAID Controller Driver files, create a folder on this Flash Drive and copy all the drivers into it.

Locate and set the option to boot from a USB Drive in the server BIOS, and you are ready to boot!

Installation of Windows 2008 is similar to installing Vista, so make sure that appropriate drivers are available for the server hardware. If the server is too old, you might run into issues.

Another good thing about the installation of Windows Server 2008, is that it is totally graphical, no more mixing of text based interface and GUI, and I have upgraded a Windows 2008 Standard to Windows 2008 Enterprise from a virtual media mounted with a Utility that mounts an .iso image as a Disk Drive. It went smooth.