Everton previously mentioned how to install Windows 7 from a USB drive which is great for situations where no DVD drive is available to install Windows 7 from DVD. Many of today’s netbooks for instance come without DVD drive to save costs. The requirement for Everton’s way of installing Windows 7 is a USB drive with a size of 4 Gigabytes. The 4 Gigabytes are needed to transfer the Windows 7 ISO as it requires more than 2 Gigabytes of space.
I recently encountered a slightly different situation. My new Acer Aspire 3810T-354G32N Timeline laptop ships without DVD drive. I also had only a 2 Gigabyte USB drive which was insufficient for the purpose of installing Windows 7. Options were to buy an external DVD drive, a 4 Gigabyte USB drive or find a way to install Windows 7 from hard drive.
The last option sounded best to me as it meant that I would not have to purchase another hardware device. Here are the steps that are required to install Windows 7 from a hard drive.
- 1. Get the Windows 7 ISO image to the hard drive: If the Windows 7 is already on the hard drive of the computer system then skip this step. There are a few ways how to get the iso image of Windows 7 on the hard drive. Users can download it if it is available online, move it to the other computer over a network connection or use a packer to create multiple smaller archives that can be put on smaller USB drives to transfer and extract the ISO image of Windows 7 on the target computer system.
- The only software that is needed to install Windows 7 from hard drive is a software to mount the ISO image on the other computer system. Possible programs are Daemon Tools, Magic Disk or Virtual Clone Drive to name a few.
- Just execute the setup of the now mounted Windows 7 installation DVD to start the installation of the operating system. Windows will copy all files to the hard drive so that they can be accessed from there even after the restart of the system.
