Capture an image larger than 4GB on FAT32 UEFI

One of the main problems facing users when creating a UEFI boot flash driver to install Windows is the need to use the FAT32 file system on the drive, which means that the maximum ISO image size (or rather the install.wim file is in it). Given that many prefer various kinds of "assemblies", which often have large than 4 GB dimensions, arises the question of recording them for UEFI.

There are ways to bypass this problem, for example, in RUFUS 2 you can make a bootable drive in NTFS, which is "visible" in UEFI. And recently there was another way that allows you to write an ISO more than 4 gigabytes on the FAT32 USB flash drive, it is implemented in my favorite WinsetupFromusB program.

How it works and an example of writing flash drive UEFI from ISO more than 4 GB

In beta version 1.6 WinsetupfromusB (end May 2015) implemented the ability to record an image of a system that exceeds 4 GB on the FAT32 drive with support for UEFI download.

As far as I understood from the information on the official website of Winsetupfromusb.com (there you can download the version under consideration), the idea arose from the discussion on the IMDisk project forum, where the user became interested in the opportunity to divide the ISO image into several files so that they can be placed on FAT32, With the subsequent "gluing" already in the process of working with them.

And this idea was implemented in WinsetupFromusb 1.6 Beta 1. The developers warn that at the moment this function has not been fully tested and may not work for someone.

To check, I took the image of ISO Windows 7 with the possibility of UEFI download, the install.wim file on which takes about 5 GB. Yourself steps to create a bootable USB drive in WinSetupFromUSB used the same as usual for UEFI (more - Instructions and video WinSetupFromUSB):

1. Automatic formatting in FAT32 in FBINST.
2. Adding an ISO image.
3. Pressing the GO button.

A notification is shown on the 2nd step: "The file is too large for the FAT32 section. It will be broken into parts. " Very well, then, it is what is required.

The record has passed successfully. It noticed that instead of the usual display of the name of the copied file in the WinsetupFromusB status bar, now instead of install.wim report: "Copying a large file. Please wait "(this is good, and some users on this file begin to think that the program hung).

As a result, on the flash drive, the ISO file with Windows is broken into two files (see Screenshot), as expected. We try to boot from it.

Checking the created drive

On my computer (Motherboard Gigabyte G1.Sniper Z87) Loading from a flash drive in UEFI mode has been successful, further looked as follows:

1. After standard "copying files", a window with the WinSetupFromusB icon and the "USB Disk Initialization" screen appeared on the Windows installer. Status is updated once a few seconds.
2. As a result - the message "Failed to initialize a USB disk. Try to disable and connect again after 5 seconds. If you use USB 3.0, try the USB 2.0 port. "

Further actions on this PC did not succeed: there is no possibility to click "OK" in the message, because the mouse and keyboard refuse to work (I tried different options), but I can't connect a USB flash drive to USB 2.0 and I can not boot, because I just have one such port , Extremely unfortunately located (flash drive does not fit).

Whatever it was, I think that this information will be useful to those who are interested in a question, and Bugi will definitely correct in future versions of the program.