If you still think that pen drives are used only to store and carry data, you may need to think again. Netbooks and other MIDs are fantastically convenient devices, but how do you install operating systems on them without an optical drive? The solution? A USB flash drive!
A USB flash drive with low read and write speeds will work slower than an optical drive but Ontop USB flash drives with TurboJet technology give you greater speed, making installations quick and reliable.
Preparing the USB drive
Before you get started, make sure you have access to a Windows Vista or Windows 7 machine.
Connect the USB flash drive to the USB port and follow the steps below:
Click Start > Accessories and hover on Command Prompt.
Right click on the Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
Type ‘diskpart' and press the Enter key. This will initiate the built in Windows disk partitioning utility.
Type 'list disk' and press the Enter key. Identify which disk is your USB flash drive.
In this example, disk 7 is my USB flash drive so I will type 'select disk 7' and press Enter.
Type 'clean' and press Enter to clean the connected USB flash drive.
Type 'create partition primary’ and hit Enter.
Type 'select partition 1' and press Enter.
Type 'active' and press Enter to make the selected partition active.
Type 'format fs=fat32' and press Enter to format the partition using the FAT32 file system.
To assign a drive letter, type 'assign' and press Enter.
Type 'exit' and you are done!
Once you have successfully executed all the steps mentioned above, you have turned your USB flash drive into bootable storage media. You can even still use the flash drive for storing data as per usual at the same time!
To get it ready to install an OS, put the operating system DVD in a computer’s DVD drive and copy all the files from the DVD to the USB flash drive. If you have an image of the OS instead of a DVD, use a third party program like MagicISO to mount the image and copy all the files to the USB flash drive.
To use the USB flash drive as an installation media, set the first boot device to USB flash drive from the BIOS and then go forward with the installation just as you would if you were using the DVD!
Ontop’s USB flash drives with TurboJet technology can be used as fast and reliable bootable media devices.
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