Create a Bootable Windows 7 USB Drive from Linux

You can actually create a bootable windows 7 USB drive from any of your Linux distribution that may be Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. If there is some problem with your Computer’s DVd-ROM then this trick is much more beneficial to you.

The things you require before proceeding is a USB drive which is greater than 4GB in size, Windows 7 image(.iso) file that may be saved into your hard drive or DVD-ROM and the lists of softwares recommended below. So lets proceed now.

Download Gparted

The first thing all you have to do is download Gparted for your Linux. If you are using Ubuntu then you can directly download it from the Ubuntu Software center.

Or you can download it using the following code in the terminal.

$ sudo apt-get install gparted

Format the Drive as NTFS

After the installation is complete Plug your USB drive into your system and Open Gparted from System > Administration > GParted Partition Editor. Now select your USB driver from the top right drop-down list.

If you have one hard drive in your computer then your USB drive should be “sdb”. Now right click your USb drive in Gparted and select “Unmount”. Now you will be able to select the NTFS partitation from Partition > Format > ntfs.

Your USb drive will be formatted in ntfs in few seconds. Now you have to enable boot in gparted which can be done from “Manage flags”, then check the “boot” flag.

After the process upto here is completed, Unplug your USB drive and plug it again into your system.

Create Bootable USB drive

The first thing here you have to do is you need to download UNetbootin. UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD. After UNetbootin is installed open it and select the “Diskimage” and then browse Windows 7 .ISO file from your harddrive or DVD. At the bottom of the Software check the “Show all Drives” box and then select your USB drive.

Now if your USB drive is “dev/sdb” (you may know it from Gparted) then you’ll have to select “/dev/sdb1″ in UNetbootin. Now simply Click the Ok button and wait for your files to be copied in the USb drive and see it work as the Bootable flash drive.