Ingredients:
- A Windows machine running PowerShell 4.0 or later
- A Windows Server 2016 ISO
1. Format the USB drive
Open a PowerShell prompt with administrative privileges (Shortcut: Win+X, then a).
PS> Get-Disk
Following which, you'll see output like the following:
Number Friendly Name ...
------ ------------- ...
0 SAMSUNG MZVLW256HEHP-000L7 ...
1 Samsung Portable SSD T5 ...
2 SanDisk Cruzer ...
Identify your USB device in the list and note the number. In my case, for this example, it is Disk Number 2.
PS> Clear-Disk -Number 2 -Confirm:$false
Create a new partition on the USB drive:
PS> New-Partition -DiskNumber 2 -UseMaximumSize -IsActive -AssignDriveLetter
You'll see output like the following:
PartitionNumber DriveLetter Offset ...
--------------- ----------- ------ ...
1 E 1048576 ...
Take note of the assigned drive letter and use Format-Volume to format it:
PS> Format-Volume -DriveLetter E -FileSystem FAT32
2. Copy setup files to USB
Mount the Windows Server 2016 ISO (in Windows Explorer you can just double-click the file, or right-click and choose Mount). Make note of the mounted ISO's drive letter. In my case, it's drive F.
PS> Set-Location F:\boot
PS> bootsect.exe /nt60 E:
PS> Copy-Item -Path F:\* -Destination E: -Recurse -Verbose
Install.wim size problems
It's very possible that the install.wim file failed to copy to the sources folder on the USB drive, so you will want to verify that it has. If it has not, then it's because the WIM file is too large for the FAT32 filesystem on the USB drive. You can run this command to split the WIM and copy it to the USB drive:
PS> dism /Split-Image /ImageFile:F:\sources\install.wim /SWMFile:E:\sources\install.swm /FileSize:4096
Once the split/copy is complete, you're all done.
Eject the USB drive and install away!
