Found simple solution for USB install with Express CD

[lassenloop]

I used rawrite32 to copy the Express CD to a flash drive. It worked perfectly.

[bigfoot65]

Awesome news.

I will test it and if all goes well, add it to the wiki. This will give us two options for USB install, at least for 64-bit.

[bigfoot65]

Did not work for me.

Is there any special you did other than run the program and select the Express DVD?

I could not get my system to recognize it as a boot drive. My machine would not boot until I removed the flash drive.

[lassenloop]

I did nothing special.

• I ran the program as admin (Windows 8).
  Booted my Amahi machine, with just one drive installed (plus the flash drive).
  From my BIOS, I selected the non-UEFI version of my flash drive.
  I got the Amahi bootloader and it began installing.

[lassenloop]

I'm not sure if it's worth mentioning, but I had previously used rawrite to put the full live CD on my flash drive. I booted from that and installed it, but decided I'd give the Express CD a shot, since I had never used this program before.

[bigfoot65]

Interesting.

I used Windows 7 to make the flash drive. Then inserted it into my test machine and it locked up the boot process.

This is what concerns me about this process, not proven to work for all. There was another person who did something similar with a different program. It worked for him, but not for me.

We need more to try this procedure and the documented one in the wiki. So far, I have only heard of a few having success with the Express CD and USB.

The only USB install that works so far is the Live CD version documented in the wiki. It does install a desktop, but is successful every time. I have done it many times and another user confirmed it worked for him as well on his HP server which has no DVD drive.

Guess there are no guarantees.

EDIT: Forgot to ask if the Express CD is the downloaded file or the actual DVD that you used?

[lassenloop]

Just the .iso I downloaded.

Previously, I had tried using Unetbootin to create a flash drive of the Express CD. I couldn't get past the bootloader without changing some of the parameters. Even then, the install failed. I went through the trouble of doing the full manual install. But decided I'd like to give rawrite a chance with the Express CD, since I liked the idea of a headless machine.

I actually found rawrite, because I couldn't get the Unetbootin flash drive to work. As you saw in my other post, my Amahi server was dead. So I needed to get it to work. I too do not have an optical drive in my server.

[bigfoot65]

Can you check the contents of the flash drive. I would be interested to see what it installed on it.

When I do the same procedure, I only get one directory, UEFI and that is it. Either I am doing something wrong, or it does not work for all.

What we need to do is make a image of the flash drive using something like http://www.alexpage.de/usb-image-tool.

[lassenloop]

I used that tool to make an image an uploaded it here:

https://mega.co.nz/#!5pZiiTCB!0IfNs1m0b ... RYOwIwR21s

I'm not sure how well that tool preserves the format of the USB drive though.

[bigfoot65]

Thanks! Will check it out.

Based on the download size I presume you used an 8GB flash drive. Is it possible to use a smaller one and then make the image? I would think 2GB would be ok.

If not, I will make do with this one.