create bootable windows server 2008 usb stick

I had the most difficult time creating a bootable usb stick to install Windows Server 2008 R2 (64bit). I tried several free/opensource programs, but after 3 failures, I found the manual process for doing so.

Basically I was cheap and didn’t get a DVD drive with my server from Dell. I kind of regretted it, but at least I learned something new here. 🙂

I used this process on a Windows Vista 32bit system to create the 64bit install disk. And it worked superbly.

C:> diskpart

DISKPART> list disk

Select the USB device from the list and substitute the disk number below
when necessary

DISKPART> select disk 1
DISKPART> clean
DISKPART> clean
DISKPART> create partition primary
DISKPART> select partition 1
DISKPART> active
DISKPART> format fs=ntfs
DISKPART> assign
DISKPART> exit

xcopy X:*.* /s/e/f Y:

where X: is your mounted image or physical DVD and Y: is your USB
device

The code above was a direct copy taken from the link below on Andrew Brampton’s website.

Only difference is that I had to run “clean” twice for some reason, and also chose the file type of NTFS instead of FAT32.

Create Bootable Windows Server 2008 USB Stick.