!!! warning "Advanced Linux knowledge is necessary for some advanced aspects that are not part of the normal use case. IE: making larger flash files will need a different file location and those instructions will need to be modified. The following instructions are for you to have something to start with."
3. Create an empty file in `/var/lib/kvmd/msd/meta/` with the exact name (case sensitive!) of the uploaded image. This will indicate PiKVM that the uploaded image is okay and can be used. For example:
The presence of an additional Mass Storage Drive should not interfere with the boot, but for reasons of compatibility paranoia, this is disabled by default. We recommend setting up the drives in advance, making sure that booting from the ISO CD is still working, and then using the drives as needed.
After that you will have access to the flash drive from the target server. **Drive 0 represents a drive that is controlled via a web interface and API. Don't use it with kvmd-otgmsd if you don't know exactly what you're doing.**
**This command will interrupt the current IO operation on ALL DRIVES** including the one that is managed via the web interface. The same result is achieved by clicking the disable media button in the web interface. Right now, the Linux kernel does not allow to distinguish between internal threads that manage different drives. It is recommended to eject the media when you know that this will not cause problems for the other media.
This procedure will create a disk image of a USB stick. This is mostly required for Windows based images since they are larger than the CDROM based limit of 2.2GB.
You can create a bootable USB stick with the normal Microsoft tools, e.g. Media Creation Tool.
Creating a bootable USB stick can also be made from an ISO file with other tools like Rufus.
Without resizing, the full size of the USB stick will be used, so keep the stick as small as possible (e.g. 4GB or 8GB) but still large enough for all Windows files. The Media Creation tool will tell you what the minimum size is.
Before creating the image file, you can use a tool like "EaseUS Partition Master Free" or "GParted" to resize the main FAT32 partition on the USB stick. This will save space on PiKVM.
You can also perform these steps on a separate unix machine and transfer the image over to pikvm with e.g. SCP.
Or, on Windows you could use a program like PassMark ImageUSB (only for full USB size images) or 'dd' for Windows to create the image. Then use WinSCP to transfer the image over to PiKVM.
Once you have the desired USB stick perform the following on the RPi to create the image directly to the PiKVM image storage folder.
1. Insert Windows based USB stick into Pi4, generated with Microsoft USB creation tool. SSH to PiKVM as root.