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How to Create a Windows To Go USB Drive Without the Enterprise Edition. File Download & Fix For All Windows OS
Did you know that a full copy of Windows can be installed and run from a USB drive? Microsoft introduced "Windows To Go" with Windows 8 Enterprise and has continued supporting the feature in Windows 10, which can be kept on a pen drive in your pocket as a portable operating system. For a long time this was a neat thing you could do with many Linux distros we plan to cover Linux Live on a separate article soon , but barring driver complications and hardware limitations, a Windows To Go drive should boot from "most" computers.
Booting a Windows 10 "To Go" drive on a modern machine that shipped with Windows 10 is likely to work fine, and because performance if often of the essence, a USB 3. Older systems that originally sold with Vista or XP may work, too, but will have reduced processing power and slower USB ports, meaning they might not meet the minimum hardware requirements, listed below:.
Microsoft's To Go documents note that a process called "respecialize" identifies and loads drivers for a specific machine during the first boot-up, along with disabling drivers that aren't required. This profile is remembered and automatically selected on subsequent boot-ups. However, we also experienced various complications when creating and booting different versions of Windows To Go Before we get to creating a Windows To Go drive, here's an overview of the testing that was performed using a variety of hardware and software combinations as well as some recommendations and considerations about configuring a portable Windows drive.
As a side note, the desktop also has a USB 3. This is typical for USB expansion cards and worth mentioning in the event that you attempt to boot from one. Here is more information on how to boot from a USB drive if the subject is unfamiliar to you. None of these are officially "certified" for Windows To Go.
Besides being fast enough to run an operating system, certified USB drives are designed to appear as fixed instead of removable devices when plugged into Windows. Both types of drives can technically be used for Windows To Go, but only fixed ones will work with the creation tool built into Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise.
The ancient Patriot drive was included out of curiosity and its performance was as poor as you'd expect. Sometimes the initial setup process for Windows 10 would BSOD or fail some other way, and when the process did complete, the performance was slow to say the least, taking upwards of 30 seconds to open a menu for instance -- if it would open at all.
This configuration might only be useful for a recovery environment if you had no other option, though a lightweight Linux distro might make more sense on such a slow drive.
We purchased this drive at the recommendation of a reader. However, as mentioned before, this level of performance is available for considerably less money on "non-certified" USB drives, which can still be used for Windows To Go via third party tools.
Microsoft's official utility has other limitations as well and we imagine most of you will wind up using third-party tools. Here are some additional non-certified drives that we recommend based on their price and advertised speed the first two are removable and not fixed, the third should be fixed :. These models are around the same cost per gig prices change a lot but again, the Corsair drive appears to Windows as fixed and not removable, which is ideal for a Windows To Go drive.
If we had to guess, you are more likely to encounter bit-capable machines than bit-exclusive machines at this point. There may be more bit systems in existence overall, but most of them are also outdated. We don't suggest using Windows 7 or Windows 8 To Go unless you're sure they'll boot on the systems you'll be using. Third-party Windows To Go creation tools also tended to fail more frequently when using Windows 7 and 8 images, which are less supported in general. Windows 10 bit should have the best driver compatibility on the machines that you are most likely to use, especially if they are on the newer side.
Booting the same configuration from USB 2. And while the creation tool is available on Pro, it still requires an Enterprise image file to create the Windows To Go drive -- among other limitations. Fortunately, there are several ways to get an Enterprise image. Microsoft offers a direct download of Windows 10 Enterprise ISO for evaluation after you fill out a form, and you can download an Enterprise install.
You'll also have to extract the install. You can convert. Even if you have an Enterprise image however, the native Windows To Go utility won't work with most USB drives , including two out of three of the ones we used for testing.
As we've been saying, the built-in tool only works with select USB drives that appear to Windows as "fixed" and not "removable. Historically, the main difference here is that Windows can't mount multiple partitions at once on removable drives only the first primary partition is mounted , yet Windows installation drives tend to have at least two partitions: one with boot info, another with the operating system.
However, as of the Windows 10 Creators Update, the operating system can mount multiple partitions on removable USB drives, and in testing we were also able to create a bootable Windows To Go drive with only one partition. Regardless, although the 32GB Samsung drive is recognized by the built-in Windows To Go tool, the software explains that the device is removable and thus not compatible. While the Corsair Voyager isn't certified for WTG either, this drive is fixed instead of removable and does work with native utility, though the software recognizes that the device technically isn't certified.
You can determine if a drive is fixed or removable from Disk Management search Start or Run for diskmgmt. Look at the squares toward the bottom left where the drive descriptions say "Basic" or "Removable. If you have a fixed USB drive and an install. With some effort and risk, there are several methods you can try to make your removable drive appear as fixed, though there's not much reason to mess with this setting when third-party Windows To Go tools will work with non-fixed drives.
We aren't recommending these approaches but acknowledge there are various methods around the web that can either flip the removable media bit on your flash drive or install a filter driver on Windows so the OS determines the drive as fixed. Proceed at your own risk, namely a bricked USB drive or blue screening Windows , the latter of which we experienced when testing filter drivers and had to restore from a recovery image. Third-party Windows To Go creation tools Rufus is probably the most popular tool that can create a Windows To Go drive for Windows 8 and 10, though it may not be so obvious at first glance.
Here's a quick guide on the Windows To Go creation process from Rufus 3. This worked for both the removable and fixed USB drives that we used for testing:. Windows 8, 8. However, Rufus 3. Because of this Windows will most likely freeze during boot, as Microsoft hasn't designed it to work with drives that instead have the removable attribute. Do you still want to proceed? However those tools are almost never provided to the public.
While Rufus is the most commonly available third-party tool we can recommend for creating an "unofficial" Windows To Go drive, the software lacks some features that others provide, such as the ability to export your currently running operating system onto a portable USB drive, though this is generally locked behind a paid license.
Before there were so many third-party tools to build a Windows To Go drive, the commonly recommended approach was to:. Preparing the USB drive for Windows To Go from Disk Management or DiskPart is simple: Delete the previous volume s , create a new volume, format that volume, give the partition a letter and then make that partition active. At this point, the USB drive should be ready for you to install the operating system files from one of the aforementioned archive files.
Your Windows ISO will have one or the other -- you only need one of them and you can convert. GImageX can apply the install. After copying the system files, you'll also have to create the boot data via Command Prompt using the OS files that you just copied to the portable drive.
Enter the following line from an admin Command Prompt, where G: is your USB drive this should only have one partition if you followed our steps, but if there is a separate partition for boot files then use that drive letter in place of the second G:. If those methods aren't hands-on enough, Microsoft provides step-by-step instructions for creating a Windows To Go drive entirely from PowerShell commands, while this guide includes a customizable PowerShell script to automate some of the process along with extra features such as the ability to inject drivers and patches.
This process is automated by many third-party Windows To Go creation tools, but the feature typically costs money. Not wanting to pay for premium licenses, we tested various ways to manually export our current OS from an SSD to a USB drive using a few free utilities and the Disk Management software already on Windows diskmgmt.
Here's an overview of the process we used to clone our actively running copy of Windows 10 Pro to a thumbdrive:. The USB drive might boot after cloning the VHD, though several times during testing we had to reapply boot information to the drive from an admin Command Prompt. You'll also want Disk Management open to see how many partitions are on the drive and what letters are assigned to them.
If there are two partitions on your USB drive, apply the boot files to the smaller one, while if there is only a single partition then you can apply the boot data there. However, our Windows To Go drive loaded to a blue screen error that read "VHD Boot Host Volume Not Enough Space" and required a registry modification to the system inside the virtual hard drive, making as much or more work out of the WTG creation process than our manual method above.
If you are going this route, you might as well change the registry setting on your system before creating the VHD so you don't have to load the registry hive separately afterward. You want to change the following registry key so the DWORD value is 4 instead of 1 to prevent the virtual disk from expanding when mounted.
Additionally, note that Rufus can copy VHD files to USB drives, though you might have to configure the boot data beyond the command mentioned above links at the end of the article should get you started. Best practices and configuration tips From the user's perspective, the first time Windows To Go is booted it performs some initial configuration before presenting the familiar setup process that you go through on any fresh Windows installation creating a user account essentially.
After that, the operating system loads up as if it were installed on any other drive. For the most part, this is a full Windows installation, though there are a few differences in configuration and usage practices.
Ideally, network drivers will be automatically loaded when you first boot into Windows To Go, at which point any other drivers can be downloaded from Windows Update or elsewhere.
After installing a few applications on a fresh WTG drive we started receiving notifications from Windows about the 32GB Samsung drive running low on space, though there was still around 10GB free. Considering hibernation and system restore are already disabled by default, there aren't many options for saving space on a stock Windows To Go install.
If storage capacity is a concern, you may want to create your drive with the Enterprise LTSC build of Windows 10, which excludes bloat such as Cortana , the Windows Store and virtually every other pre-installed application -- including Microsoft Edge we installed Iridium. We reclaimed an additional 2. While the LTSC build of Windows 10 is already pretty barebones, more built-in applications, drivers, updates and other operating system components can be added or removed to an installation image by loading the install.
If you're going this route, here's another detailed guide on configuring Windows 10 components. Getting started in NTLite: Add a. Right click that file when it appears in the software and choose "load. Depending on the speed of your drive and host system, you might also want to disable animations for menus and windows, which can improve performance on lower-end machines and Windows is visually snappier without these settings enabled.
The gif above demonstrates the speed difference of opening and closing OpenShell with and without one of these performance animation settings enabled "Fade or slide menus into view". After you've configured your Windows To Go installation, you might want to make a backup image of the drive so the operating system can be reapplied with your customizations hint: Rufus can create an image with the save icon next to your USB drive.
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Learn more. Older systems that originally sold with Vista or XP may work, too, but will have reduced processing power and slower USB ports, meaning they might not meet the minimum hardware requirements, listed below: The ability to boot from a USB drive USB 2.
Hardware and software configurations tested Before we get to creating a Windows To Go drive, here's an overview of the testing that was performed using a variety of hardware and software combinations as well as some recommendations and considerations about configuring a portable Windows drive.
Making a removable drive appear as fixed With some effort and risk, there are several methods you can try to make your removable drive appear as fixed, though there's not much reason to mess with this setting when third-party Windows To Go tools will work with non-fixed drives.
Here are many other tools that can make a portable Windows drive: WinToUSB - This tool is dedicated to creating Windows To Go drives and has already received an update to work with the latest build of Windows 10 Getting started: Select a Windows image file. FlashBoot - Has a variety of features for USB drives, including the ability to create one that will boot independently from your primary operating system.
The software can also use the.
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