Great uses for a Windows to go disk

@glasskuter,

If memory serves correctly, I seem to recall you noting that you have at least one laptop that has very little storage so you might be interested in this.

I have a really low end laptop. It has only 32GB of EMMC storage so it doesn't lend itself to doing much. Even by enabling "CompactOS" and setting the hibernation file to "reduced" size, it only leaves about 5GB of free space. There is not a whole lot I can do with that little space available.

I was getting ready to toss that laptop in the trash, but I keep wondering if there was something that I could do with it before trash day comes around to maybe rescue it.

Suddenly, I had an idea: I have not played with Windows to go in a long time, in part because it is now longer supported by Microsoft. But I know that Rufus can easily create a Windows to go disk so I tried it by installing to a 1TB USB connected SSD.

Wow, that works well. It runs just great and breaths new life into that little system.

Just for grins, since that laptop is capable of booting from a Micro SD card, I tried that as well. While Windows 11 actually runs better than I had expected from the SD card, I'm not going to make that a permanent solution since I don't trust the endurance of an SD card, but it's nice to know that it does work.

I also ended up finding another use for my Windows to go disk: I have a friend who keeps a Mini PC on the coffee table out by his TV. This way, if something comes up that he wants to look up on the web, he can do so right then and there. I've always hated using his system because so many of his preferences are different from how I would set things up. Also, I don't have any of my links or other resources on his system. Now, I just boot from my SSD and I have my complete environment along with Microsoft 365, my e-mail, pretty much everything I need. As a result, rather than dragging a laptop over, now all I need is my SSD.

I even have my Win to go installation BitLocker encrypted just in case I loose that SSD. All I need do is enter a password when I first boot from it.

Very interesting. I've never dabbled with windows to go. I thought it took some special kind of usb drive to work. Tell me this. How does it deal with drivers when moved from one system to another?

I'm not letting anyone stick their flash drive in my computer.

What about the video card driver?

glasskuter said:

Very interesting. I've never dabbled with windows to go. I thought it took some special kind of usb drive to work. Tell me this. How does it deal with drivers when moved from one system to another?

Click to expand...

Back when WTG first rolled out, you needed a special USB drive with a Removable Media Bit (RMB) setting. This informed Windows your drive was "non-removable" since normal Windows doesn't work on removable drives.

Some USB vendors marketed specific flash drives intended for WTG, but they got mixed up with normal USB drives. If you bought the wrong model, it was frustrating because you could no longer "eject from USB". Needless to say, this confusion and the lack of WTG interest killed off those special drives.

Later on, WTG just fixed their code so you could use any USB drive that was fast and durable enough.

I created my WTG disk using Rufus since the capability is no longer built into Windows.

I found that I could use any USB drive, but if a drive presents itself as a removable disk (as opposed to a fixed disk) I get a warning every time that I boot that Windows has created a temp page file. It's annoying but it works. However, to work around I'm using a PNY Pro Elite V2 flash drive. I get over 800MB+/S read speeds on this and it presents itself as a fixed disk drive.

As for drivers, when you boot from that drive on a new machine it tries to detect what drivers it needs and loads them. For missing drivers, load them as usual. You only need to do this once on a given machine, or ignore the missing drivers if you don't care . I have moved my flash drive between 5 machines and loaded the appropriate drivers. Now it automatically loads the correct drivers for each machine.

@Edwin I also created a WTG Drive with rufus for my windows insider build using a 2.5 SATA SSD inside an enclosure because as I am currently using NMVE drives for main OS but try to add a 2.5 SATA SSD to the mix and Clean Install Windows from USB causes an error "won't install to the selected drive" which means I have to remove the NMVE Drives first to be able install Windows to the 2.5 SATA SSD.

The only quirk with mine is it will only boot on one certain front USB 3.0 port or USB 2.0 ports on both Desktops, if I try to use any ports on the back (USB 3.0 or USB 3.1) I get an "Unmountable boot volume error" when booting.