I just completed downloading the Windows 8 Developer Preview with tools and have a tiny problem.  Well, not so tiny… all of my blank DVD media is 4.7Gbs in size, however the Developers Preview with tools tops the 4.8Gbs mark.  I was searching high and low for a larger blank DVD disk when I remembered a previous article from a few years back where my Netbook didn’t even have an optical drive and I turned to a USB thumb drive to save me.  Time to do it again!

 

1. Format USB flash drive to NTFS format

Format the USB drive to NTFS format

2. Disk-Part the Drive

On the Start menu, navigate to the command prompt entry. Right-click and select Run as administrator.

Type

diskpart

list disk

Record the disk number of your USB flash drive.

Select the USB disk.

select disk X (X is the drive number of the USB flash drive)

List the current partition. Record the partition number.

list partition

Select the current partition and make it active.

select partition Y (Y is the partition number of the USB flash drive)

active

3. Prepare the OS files

Download Windows 8 Developers Preview ISO to your desktop.

Download and install PowerISO from http://poweriso.com/.

Right-click on the Windows 8 iso file and select Extract files. Extract the files to a folder (you can name the folder any name you want, but for illustration purpose, I name it win-8) in your desktop.

In your command prompt, cd to the windows 8 folder where you extracted the files.

cd Desktop/win-8 (Change the destination to the folder that you have extracted)

cd boot

bootsect /nt60 X: (X is the drive latter of your USB drive )

Now, copy all the files from the Windows 8 folder to the USB flash drive (of appropriate size of course, I’m using a Patriot 8Gb purchased for cheap off NewEgg.

Reboot the computer. Remember to change the first boot device to your USB drive in the BIOS.

You should be able to install Windows 8 from your USB flash drive now.