A few days ago I found myself needing to create a bootable USB drive to test one of our image deployment solutions. Come to find out I had previously formatted my USB drive and did not have a valid bootable partition. Luckily [insert sarcasm here] I was running Windows Vista. After all, that is the operating system of choice at my job. It turns out Vista has diskpart, just like good ol’ Windows XP had. Here are the steps to creating a valid USB bootable partition. All commands are in quotes.
- Insert USB key.
- Open a command prompt type “disk” and press enter.
- Issue the “list disk” command to get a list of all disks on your system and press enter.
- Issue the “select disk #”, where the number denotes the number of the disk on the list that you wish to select, and press enter. Make sure you have the correct disk; otherwise you could be in for a surprise.
- Type “clean” and press enter. This will erase everything on the selected disk.
- Next type “create partition primary” and hit enter.
- Now that the primary partition has been created. Issue the “select partition 1″ command and press enter.
- Set the partition active by issuing the “active” command and press enter.
- To format the newly created and activated partition. Issue the “format fs-fat32″ and hit enter. You can also enter “format fs-fat32 quick” to perform a quick format.
- Type exit and hit enter.
That’s it!!! proceed to load the files you need the USB drive to boot. You can find files at bootdisk.com
I am a Cisco Certified Network Associate and Microsoft Certified Professional. I am currently working towards a CCNP and MCPIT, and make my money as a Network Administrator.
My interests are Technology, Physics, Mathematics, Politics and Sports. 
