Booting DVD from USB stick

Just a couple of days ago it happened again: A DVD sitting on my desk and a computer ready for installation without a DVD drive. The only difference this time: I had no USB DVD drive.

On my trusted CentOS system with an internal DVD drive I followed the following steps armed with a 16 GB USB Flash Drive and a Windows 7 installation medium:

$ sudo yum install ms-sys ntfsprogs
$ sudo cfdisk /dev/sdb

After cfdisk the usb stick looks like this:

$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdb

Disk /dev/sdb: 16.0 GB, 16008609792 bytes
64 heads, 32 sectors/track, 15267 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 2048 * 512 = 1048576 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000dfd5d

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1       15267    15633392    7  HPFS/NTFS

Now we can format the partition and follow with the final steps:

$ sudo mkfs.ntfs /dev/sdb1
$ sudo ms-sys -7 /dev/sdb
$ sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/
$ sudo cp -r /media/windows7disk/* /mnt/
$ sudo umount /mnt/

HINT: If you make a dd copy of your usb stick you can store it on your harddrive and make a shortcut next time.