Converting ESD to WIM

Today I needed to deploy a Windows 10 image downloaded with the Media Creation Tool to a machine. Lacking a flash drive large enough to hold the ISO, I tried to use Windows Deployment Services. Unfortunately, the install image inside the ISO was in ESD format, not WIM, and therefore incompatible with WDS. Last time I hit this problem, I downloaded an Enterprise version from TechNet (which does include a WIM) because the only ESD conversion solution I could find involved a rather sketchy third-party utility.

Today, though, I found a wonderfully easy method that uses only Microsoft utilities. Once I extracted install.esd, this command did the job:

dism /export-image /SourceImageFile:install.esd /SourceIndex:1 /DestinationImageFile:install.wim /Compress:max /CheckIntegrity

The integrity-checking flag might not be strictly necessary. If the ESD holds multiple images (as mine did), DISM can list them and their indexes with:

dism /get-wiminfo /wimfile:install.esd

Note that older OSes' versions of DISM might not have the functionality needed for these commands to work. For example, Windows 7's doesn't seem to have /export-image. I tested these on Windows 10.