Create a bootable USB pen for SCCM Windows 7 Build Deployment

If you are ever in a situation where deploying your OS by SCCM's more conventional methods (ie PXE or LAN based deployments) isn't feasable (bandwidth/no connectivity) then you can prepare a USB pen and deploy to machines via a USB boot.

I've found the SCCM built in method of making a USB pen to be quite unreliable so I opt for the manual method.

Just a few heads up first:

• I'd recommend at least an 8GB drive but in reality your build (if corporate) will eventually exceed this.
• The pen will be totally wiped clean - all data will be lost.

Step 1:  Preparing the USB pen

1. Open command prompt
2. Type diskpart and press enter
3. Type list disk and press enter
4. Find your disk in the list
5. Type select disk * (* being your number)
6. Type clean and press enter - you should see "DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk."
7. Type create partition primary and press enter - you should see "DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition."
8. Type select partition 1 and press enter - you should see "Partition 1 is now the selected partition." 
9. Type active and press enter - you should see "DiskPart Marked the current partition as active."
10. Type assign and press enter - you should see "DiskPart successfully assigned a drive letter ..."
11. Type detail disk and press enter.  For this example we will work with a drive letter "U" for USB
12. Type exit to leave the Diskpart command and return to a standard prompt

Step 2:  Formatting & Copying

We are still using a drive letter "U:" so we want to type:

format U: /fs:fat32 /q YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING ON THE PEN HERE

Enter a label for the drive - this is how it will show in "Computer"

I copy the files manually - it works - but if you want to do it "properly" use this command:

In command prompt navigate to the location of your build files - this is what would have been extracted from the ISO that was produced in SCCM when you "Created Removable Media" from the OSD task sequence - if you need a guide on this mail me or leave a comment...

Type xcopy \*.* /s/e/f \ 

With our extracted ISO in C:\Win7Build and our pen being U:\ This would look like:

Type xcopy c:\Win7Build\*.* /s/e/f U:\ 

Don't forget you may/will need to adjust the boot order in the BIOS to accommodate booting from USB - you can find a guide here: http://bit.ly/TvndIW