Create a USB Drive for Windows Server 2019 Installation

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Create a USB Drive for Windows Server 2019 Installation
by Thomas Maurer | July 28, 2018

 
This blog post covers how you can create a bootable USB media drive to install Windows Server 2019 on a physical server. This blog post will not use any third party tools, it only uses build in tools which you can find on Windows 10 or Windows Server. Depending on your system you will need it to install it on a BIOS system or a UEFI based system, which is slightly different since UEFI will use GPT disks and BIOS will use a MBR disk.

Getting ready to create a USB Drive for a Windows Server 2019 Installation

First you will need to have all prerequisites in place.
– Download the Windows Server 2019 ISO File
– A USB Drive with at least 8GB size

Windows Server 2019 USB Thumb Drive for UEFI (GPT) systems
Windows Server 2019 USB Thumb Drive for BIOS (MBR) systems

 
Read the full article here

1 user thanked author for this post.

ch100

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Thanks Kirsty.
The method presented is complicated and not for everyone.
Our readers should be aware that there are easier ways, the most common being to use a tool named Rufus. Version 2.18 seems to be the last in a series used by most people, as the next version seems to be bloated with other stuff, understandable from the developer’s point of view who needs to earn an income from developing the tool.
There is another way presented on one trusted forum which I didn’t test, but seems correct to me, which is to format the USB key to FAT32, make the partition Active (this may or may not be required, depending on the BIOS) and copying the contents of the ISO directly to the USB. This would work but likely not on all BIOSes.

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jburk07, Kirsty

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Thanks @ch100

I first came across Rufus last year, when I had my Win7 drive crash. Since then, I have seen it mentioned often, incl. in this article from @martinbrinkmann:

Rufus 3.0 released – ISO to bootable USB for Windows
May 30, 2018

Rufus 3.0 is out; the new version of the popular utility for Windows is one of the easiest options on PCs running Windows to create bootable USB devices using ISO images.
…
Rufus 3.0 is a well designed program for Windows to turn ISO images into bootable media. The new version changes the interface slightly but for the better in my opinion.

If anyone would like to read Martin’s piece, here’s the link.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Elly, jburk07

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