How to create a Windows 8 install on a USB Drive

I will go over how to install Windows 8 from a USB drive. There are many reasons why you would want to install Windows 8 from a flash drive. The two main reasons for doing this is:

1. Increasing the Install speed
2. The machine you are wanting to install Windows 8 on might not have a optical drive.

There are two ways of getting Windows 8 setup files onto the USB Drive:

1. Automatically using a utility
2. Manually using the command line

While I will go over each of the methods listed above, most people you will just want to use the automatic utility and be done with it. It’s so easy to do you can be slightly intoxicated and still be successful.

How to copy the Windodws 8 setup files to a USB drive and make it bootable by using a utility:

There are several things you will need to have in order to make this work:

1. Have a USB drive that has at least 4GB of space. This drive will be eventually formatted so you will loose everything on it.
2. Windows 8 iso image. I got mine from the Technet website. You could also make an image using CDburnerXP if you have a physical disk.
3. I put my iso in a folder called “C:\Windows 8”
4. Download Universal USB installer. I’m using 1.9.1.5 for this post.

Run the Universal USB installer. Your screen should look similar to mine once you are finished selecting the options:

** PLEASE NOTE **

I’ve highlighted in red the items you will need to select. Depending on your system your USB drive will most likely be something other than G drive. Please make sure you select the proper drive in step 3. You will also need to make sure the drive is formatted with Fat32 instead of NTFS.

Hit the “Create” button to start converting your USB drive into a Windows 8 installer flash drive. You will get a message warning you you will loose ALL DATA that is currently on the flash drive.

Yup… That’s all there is… Now just sit back and wait 10 minutes and it should be done. Take your usb now to the machine you want to install Windows 8 on and boot from it.

Manual way of creating a bootable Windows 8 Install

The process is almost identical to my documentation on “How to create a Windows 7 install on a USB drive”. Please check out my old post until I have time to update this page.