Install Windows Home Server 2011 without a DVD Drive

I recently set up an HP MicroServer and installed Windows Home Server 2011 on it, but I first had to figure out how to do it without a DVD drive (which is the default configuration of the MicroServer and one more reason why it’s so affordable), so I had to make a USB flash drive bootable and copy the installation files from the Microsoft’s default setup DVD to run the setup.

I achieved this after I found this old set of instructions on TechNet and they worked fine, so below is my note to self with a list of the necessary diskpart.exe commands. The USB shouldn’t be smaller than 8 GB and I highly recommend USB 2.0 even if the machine to be installed doesn’t support it (it will still work, while the copying from the DVD onto the USB on your computer will go much quicker). The USB drive gets wiped with the procedure below, it becomes a bootable drive and the installation files are copied to it, .

Making USB Flash Drive Bootable and Copying Installation Files to It

WARNING: You can badly mess up (wipe off) your computer’s disk if you target the utility below to a hard drive instead of the USB thumb drive. Don’t do this if you’re not technically inclined, computer literate, geeky and absolutely sure you know what you’re doing!

These are the commands I ran in a command prompt (cmd.exe):

diskpart.exe
DISKPART> list disk

Select the USB device from the list and substitute the ‘x’ below with CORRECT disk number (see the above warning – you can mess up your computer big time if you use a wrong number)

DISKPART> select disk x
DISKPART> clean
DISKPART> create partition primary
DISKPART> select partition 1
DISKPART> active
DISKPART> format fs=fat32
DISKPART> assign
DISKPART> exit

xcopy X:*.* /s/e/f Y:

where X: is your DVD drive letter with installation media or the letter of the mounted ISO image of the installation DVD and Y: is your USB device.

Note: I reinstalled the OS a few times, not paying attention what was going on while browsing the wonderful and the ever-distracting internet, because each reboot was getting me back to the initial installation screen (new installation or recovery) until I realized I had to take out the USB flash drive during the first reboot, most likely because it was set to a higher boot priority than the HDD.

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