How to Create a bootable Windows 2012 R2 USB Disk? (applies to Windows 8.1 also)

Uncategorized 1 Minute

Pre-requisites: 7-Zip software (Download it from here: http://7-zip.org/), Windows 2012 (R2) ISO (or Windows 8.1 ISO), 8GB or more USB disk

  • Open Command Prompt in elevated mode (Run as Administrator)
  • Type diskpart and press Enter
  • Type list disk and press Enter. Note the list of existing disks.
  • Insert the USB Disk
  • Type list disk and press enter again. Note the new disk showed up which is our USB disk. I assume the new disk is 2 for example purpose.
  • Type select disk X where X is your USB disk. E.g., select disk 2. Press Enter.
  • Type clean and press enter.
  • Type create partition primary and press enter to create primary partition 1.
  • Type select partition 1 and press enter.
  • Type active and press enter to make the partition 1 active
  • Type format fs=ntfs and press enter. This will format the partition 1 as NTFS volume.
  • Type assign and press enter to assign the USB disk to a drive letter.

 

  • Now right click on Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 8.1 ISO file, select 7-Zip –> Extract Files…
  • Select your USB disk to extract the ISO contents to the USB disk

That’s all. Boot the server or computer using the bootable USB disk.

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Published by --Anand--

Being in Silicon Valley for years, I became a IT Infrastructure Geek by experience and surrounded by other Geeks everywhere. I try to help others by the solutions I found on odd occasions.

Published

8 thoughts on “How to Create a bootable Windows 2012 R2 USB Disk? (applies to Windows 8.1 also)”

  1. Do we need to run the diskpart from windows Server 2012 r2 server or from my window 7 laptop also I can do it.

    Reply

  3. This doesn’t work for windows 2012 R2 if you have an EFI based server. You need FAT32 as the file system and it doesn’t support files over 4 GB

    Reply

    1. I never tried on FAT32 bootable OS USB for Windows Server 2012. I did it for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

      Yes FAT32 doesn’t support single file size with 4GB+ size. BUT Windows Server 2012 R2 files (none of them, including the WIM files) are not that big. I think you can try FAT32 safely as bootable disk.

      Reply

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