Unattended installation using USB stick

[jaclaz]

@kiki burgh

FYI, they are not that similar, the other thread involves booting a "whole" XP System, i.e. NTLDR+NTDETECT.COM+BOOT.INI with a directory structure like \Windows, this one involves booting an INSTALL, i.e. SETUPLDR.BIN+NTDETECT.COM+TXTSETUP.SIF with a directory structure like \I386 or \minint, similar to a BartPE or elder releases of WinPE.

jaclaz

[TravisO]

Cons:

1. USB storage costs more per gig than CD/DVD

2. USB is slow

3. USB has a limited amount of read/writes

Pros:

1.

I can't think of any pros, it seems to be you've fallen to victum of "newer is always better" which isn't the case in this scenario.

[jaclaz]

@travisowens

I'll give you one:

Pros:

1. Portability

I have in my wallet a 1Gb USB flash disk:

http://www.kingmaxdigi.com/product/superstick.htm

Dimension : 34mm x 12.4mm x 2.2mm

Weight : 2g

with an install of BartPE and a few portable apps .

I take it with me all the time.

You will agree that having a CD in your pocket is not really comfortable.

About write cycles, they are at least in the thousands operations for flash based devices, no real problem whatsoever in normal use (NOT if used as bootable OS with stick formatted NTFS without EWF/FBWF), it is much more easy to scratch a CD and render it unreadable or just unreliable.

jaclaz

[selyb]

2. USB is slow

USB1.1 < CD < DVD < USB2.0

CD - 52x is approx 7.2MBps

DVD - 16x is approx 21.6MBps

those are the max speeds when/if you get to the outer edge

a 16x dvd drive should start reading approx 6MBps at the center

a 52x cd drive should start reading approx 3MBps at the center

USB1.1 can transfer at 1.5MBps

USB2.0 can transfer at 60MBps

3. USB has a limited amount of read/writes

CD-R and DVD-/+R have a much more strict limitation on number of writes and i wouldnt consider using RW in opposition to a flash drive

Pros:

1. you can update setup files as needed without erasing the entire medium and re-writing

@Jaclaz: I've been looking over your posts about installing from USB for the last couple weeks and i have what i think is a great solution to the problem with files being deleted: copy setup files to target hdd and write bootloader and boot sector to boot the installation

i installed slax frodo on my usb drive

i format the target hdd as ntfs, write the boot sectors, and copy xp setup files to the hdd

now i need to figure out how to get the setup files i need to copy to the hdd

i used winnt32 /makelocalsource /syspart: /tempdrive: but this makes the files specific to that hdd (boot.ini points to C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\bootsect.dat)

what im trying to do is make the process a few steps as possible so others can benefit

step 1: update xp setup files

step 2: batch file to create setup folders to skip text mode part of install and 7zip them

step 3: copy updated 7z's to flash drive

soon i will write a simple script for slax to ask which hdd you want to install to and then format and copy all setup files to that disk

then you remove the usb drive and reboot the pc

the temp setup files will be removed from the hdd as they should be and you dont have to copy the files back to the usb drive every time you do an install

[biatche]

I'm interested to know if this is all possible as well... and how it can be done.

I've my unattended setup already and working well under DVD... its between 1-2GB at the moment

burning takes way too long.... wish to do usb flash drive... or network pxe..... any suggestions?

[jaclaz]

@Jaclaz: I've been looking over your posts about installing from USB for the last couple weeks and i have what i think is a great solution to the problem with files being deleted: copy setup files to target hdd and write bootloader and boot sector to boot the installation

i installed slax frodo on my usb drive

i format the target hdd as ntfs, write the boot sectors, and copy xp setup files to the hdd

now i need to figure out how to get the setup files i need to copy to the hdd

i used winnt32 /makelocalsource /syspart: /tempdrive: but this makes the files specific to that hdd (boot.ini points to C:\$WIN_NT$.~BT\bootsect.dat)

Well, as I see it, having a bootable Linux system is to be considered as "cheating" , the general idea is not to use "other" means, otherwise we already have the working "install from USB in ten steps" (limited to FAT16 and FAT32, but one can use the "convert.exe" utility later) here:

http://www.911cd.net/forums//index.php?showtopic=16713

However, if you have a way to copy the files to the hard disk (after having formatted it), you can use Grub4dos as an entry in boot.ini to directly load a setupldr.bin, this way your setup will be portable.

Moreover, you should be able to exchange hd0 with hd1, so that even if you booted from USB, the internal hard disk will be C : nonetheless.

If you need some help with grub4dos, here is the whereto:

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=14

Search on the 911cd foru for "grub4dos" you'll find several infos.

jaclaz