Using an SD card to install?

AddRAM said:

Your title is Using an SD card to install?


But then you ask if you can use it as a boot drive, sooo which is it ?

He said boot drive, but my interpretation is he meant bootable drive, like a bootable thumb drive. For installation purposes.

I've tried it on my laptop but the internal card reader does not show up in the boot selection list.

Wynona said:

alphanumeric said:

AddRAM said:

Your title is Using an SD card to install?


But then you ask if you can use it as a boot drive, sooo which is it ?

He said boot drive, but my interpretation is he meant bootable drive, like a bootable thumb drive. For installation purposes.

I've tried it on my laptop but the internal card reader does not show up in the boot selection list.

Alpha, did you try it with a USB SD Card reader? Just curious.

No not yet. I may just to prove to myself that the SD card is bootable. Doing it that way defeats the purpose. At least that's the way I see it. If I have to put the card in a USB card reader I may as well just use a USB thumb drive. I currently do all my installs from thumb drives. I have just recently bought a couple of USB SD card readers. I bought them so I can prepare SD cards for my Raspberry PI on my desktop PC that doesn't have a card reader. That's my plan anyway. I haven't actually tried one of them yet, it might be time to give it a go though.

OK I just made a bootable SD card with Windows 10 Enterprise TP. I made it in the USB card reader on my desktop PC. My laptop will boot from it just like a bootable thumb drive. If I take the SD card out and put it in my laptops built in card reader, nada. It's not listed as a bootable device in the quick boot menu. Being a laptop there isn't much in the way of boot options. Not like you'd see on a desktop PC.

Wynona said:

alphanumeric said:

Wynona said:

Alpha, did you try it with a USB SD Card reader? Just curious.

No not yet. I may just to prove to myself that the SD card is bootable. Doing it that way defeats the purpose. At least that's the way I see it. If I have to put the card in a USB card reader I may as well just use a USB thumb drive. I currently do all my installs from thumb drives. I have just recently bought a couple of USB SD card readers. I bought them so I can prepare SD cards for my Raspberry PI on my desktop PC that doesn't have a card reader. That's my plan anyway. I haven't actually tried one of them yet, it might be time to give it a go though.

Sure, it may defeat your purpose, but it might give someone else an option they wouldn't have otherwise. In fact, I'm not sure but I think the OP said he doesn't have a flash drive large enough.

And here I am with so many flash drives, I had several I could donate to a very poor school district for underprivileged kids. They needed them with 4 to 8 GB and I was able to pass a few on.

Yes, well put, I lost sight of the original question.
lol, I've got 24 or so thumb drives kicking around here. 1's, 2's, 4's, 8's, 16's, 32's and one 64 gig. I've given a few away over the years too.

Wynona said:

alphanumeric said:

OK I just made a bootable SD card with Windows 10 Enterprise TP. I made it in the USB card reader on my desktop PC. My laptop will boot from it just like a bootable thumb drive. If I take the SD card out and put it in my laptops built in card reader, nada. It's not listed as a bootable device in the quick boot menu. Being a laptop there isn't much in the way of boot options. Not like you'd see on a desktop PC.

Yay! That's great, Alpha!

So now, the OP can mark this one solved and you can write up the 'structions for the Tutorial section. :) Aren't you glad I know how to delegate?

I used diskpart, and followed the same method you use to make a bootable thumb drive. Option two here, UEFI Bootable USB Flash Drive - Create in Windows The other methods will likely work but I have the diskpart commands pretty well memorized so that's what I use. My wife's ACER laptop is fussy about how the drive is prepared for a UEFI install.

One thing I noticed is the install from the flash card seemed to be very slow compared to one from a thumb drive. It was a long time before the first selection screen came up. My flash card is a Sandisk Ultra 30 MB/S SD card. USB 2 is good for 35 MB/s so I'm not sure why it seemed so slow. I didn't do a full install though, I only went far enough to verify it was bootable and bailed out. The USB SD card reader says its USB 2.0. That's what's silkscreened on it anyway. They were very inexpensive so maybe they aren't? This is what I bought, SD-MMC Card Reader