We Got Served

Many of us more technically-inclined poeple have probably built our own Windows Home Server systems by now or are considering it.  But one of the more tricky problems with building your own Home Server is how to install it.  Sure there is picking up a spare DVD drive just to install Home Server intially, but most of us just remove it as soon as we’re done with it.  And there are some of us without a spare DVD drive.  Well, there is a a great solution to that.  Using a USB Flash Drive.  Not only can you just delete everything after you are done installing, but who doesn’t have a few laying around?

Want to know more?  Well, here it is:

If you want to create a Windows Home Server Flash Drive, you will need a 2GB stick because the DVD takes 1.2GB of space.  The Windows Home Server Restore Disk takes about 130MB so a 256MB stick or larger is preferred because of additional drivers and such.  Windows Vista takes about 2.4GB for the 32-bit version and about 3.2GB for the 64-bit verions, so you are going to want to use a 4GB stick.

As a word of warning, older USB flash drives may not be bootable, and some older systems will not boot off of USB drives.  Both of these can be check in either your motherboard’s documentation, or by checking BIOS.

Insert your USB Flash Drive into any computer with Windows Vista. Make sure that it installs it correctly and everything comes up fine. Now, make sure anything important is off of the drive because we are going to be formatting it in just a bit.

1. Load an elevated command prompt (Start menu-> all programs -> accessories -> right click on “Command Prompt” and click on “Run as Administrator”).
2. Type in “diskpart” and hit Enter.
3. Next type each the follow commands in respective order at the “DISKPART>” command prompts. Note - this assumes that disk 2 is the USB flash drive (as it was on my system). You will need to replace the “2” in “select disk 2” with the disk number of your USB flash drive.

list disk
select disk 2
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32
assign
exit

This should all come out looking like this:

After this is done, you can make the USB Flash Drive intaller for Windows Vista or Windows Home Server.

Windows Home Server

If you want to create an installer flash disk for Windows Home Server, find that Server Install Disk and copy its contents over to the USB Flash drive. This may take 20-30 minutes or longer. After this is done, you can also make the installer automated by creating a file called “qs.ini” on the flash drive. This has to be in the root directory else the installer will not find it. Create the file, and change the product key to yours and the server name to your desired name:

[Q Setup]
ProductKey=00000-00000-00000-00000-00000
ServerName=SERVER

This will now automatically install Windows Home Server on the computer when you boot off of it.

WHS Restore Disk

Easier thand WIndows Home Server, just copy the contents of the Windows Home Server Restore CD to the USB Flash Drive. Just boot from it, and you can restore any computer that can boot for USB drives. Great for that laptop with the burned out CD/DVD drive. Don’t forget to add drivers that you may need on this as the Restore console may need them.

Windows Vista

Not much different than Windows Home Server here. Just copy the contents of the DVD to the flash drive. After it is done copying, if you create a file called “PID.TXT” in “X:\sources\” where “X” is the flash drive, and change “value” to your product key, it won’t ask you for your key or which version of Vista you want to install:

[PID]
Value=00000-00000-00000-00000-00000

Done

You’re done, that is it. Just remove the Flash Drive, and boot from it. There are several ways to get your computer to boot from the USB Flash Drive now. My computer hitting F8 during the BIOS load screen allows me to choose what drive to boot from. I prefer this way because you should only ever need to boot from removable media once. The other way is to get into your bios and change the boot order so that the USB drive boots first. After it has reset once, you need to change it back unless you want it to install over and over again. I would go over how to do this but each bios is pretty much unique to the hardware.

Don’t forget to add SATA/RAID if you need them. Also, assuming you have the space, you can add any drivers or other programs that you may need to this flash drive because it is going to be there anyways.

Good luck, and have fun installing.

Credits

This page was original written by Donavon from HomeServerHacks, and modified to include how to install Windows Vista, and Windows Home Server Restore Disk.