The setup files for most popular operating system, Windows, come on a DVD disk. But the DVD data transfer speed is slower compared to modern USB devices. This means that if you use a bootable USB disk to install Windows, then it will install faster compared to the DVD disk. Using a USB disk for installing Windows also enables you to install it on systems that lack a DVD disk drive (for example on a netbook). If you have a USB key with as much as 4 GB of free space, then you can turn it into a bootable Windows USB disk using the free WinSetupFromUSB utility.
You can download this freeware tool from the WinSetupFromUSB website. A word of caution when downloading the file – do not use any download manager. I downloaded it 5 times using Free Download Manager and Download Them All and each time the file turned out to be corrupted. So finally I had to download using simple browser download function.
The downloaded file is a self extracting 7-Zip archive which does not require you to install anything. The main user interface is very well organized and allows you to create a bootable Windows USB setup disk in a single easy step. It has two sections in the user interface.
In the first section, you can select your USB disk drive. It offers you to format and partition your USB disk drive using many different tools like FBinst Tool, BootIce and RMPrepUSB. For Windows setup purposes, I suggest that you use FBinst tool which automatically formats it with FAT32 partition.
In the second section, you have to provide a source file for Windows CD/DVD ISO image. If you do not have an ISO image file, then you can use the freeware tool Imgburn to create the ISO file from the Windows CD/DVD.
Although not necessary, if you want to tinker with its settings, then you can click on Advanced options checkbox which would open another window full of options. There are many options like creating custom names for Windows sources, launching Q-Dir (a file explorer application) before running the setup etc.
After this, all you have to do is click on the GO button. You would see many prompts about formatting your USB disk followed by the file copy progress. In the end, you would have in your hands the bootable Windows USB setup disk through which you can install Windows on any computer you want.
Conclusion: The WinSetupFromUSB is an advanced but easy to use bootable Windows USB setup disk creation utility through which you can easily create USB setup disks for Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8. It is able to create a USB disk which can boot both in the BIOS and (U)EFI modes.
You can download WinSetupFromUSB from http://www.winsetupfromusb.com/.