And we all know that CD/DVDs get lost, scratched, and cracked and that CD drives go bad. This blog post is also available in PDF format in a free TechRepublic download.īut why would you want to transfer your installation media from CD/DVD to a flash drive? If you want to install a different operating system on your netbook, you are going to have to have a USB drive ready with installation files. And better still, WinToFlash also preps the USB drive for you and sets the drive as bootable. This tool can take your Windows 7 (Vista or XP) installation CD/DVDs and pull the contents onto a USB drive. One such tool that I frequently use is WinToFlash by Novicorp. Fortunately, for those who wish to stay away from the command line, there are GUI tools that can tackle the same task. Of course, not everyone wants to use the command line. In his recent Windows blog, Greg Schultz wrote about how you can 'Configure a USB Flash Drive to Be a Windows 7 Installation Platform.' This handy and reliable method uses the command-line tool DiskPart.

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