Windows To Go: How to Install and Run Windows 10 from a USB Drive

There is also Windows PE if all you need is an installation and recovery environment.
 
Best practices and configuration tip # 2635

You don't need a USB drive for Win2Go!
Win2Go can be installed on internal (or external) SATA hard drives as well as USB hard drives to give you better results than using a slow thumb drive

I use an ancient XP compatible 7200RPM laptop hard drive for testing as a Win2Go drive and it has a few advantages for me

I make a single 64GB MBR Boot partition with disc management and then a Work partition for the remainder of the drive

This way, the single Win2Go MBR boot partition is compatible with my Windows XP backups and I can restore either XP or Win2Go using the free version of Acronis for Western Digital Drives (2012 edition)

Aomei Partition Assistant will install Win2Go directly to the MBR partition without making a separate EFI boot partition

When using an old XP compatible hard drive, there is no need to offset the partitions like you would do with an SSD or the New Technology formatted drives

If you want to use an XP compatible hard drive for Win2Go, you MUST remember that a backup made for the hard drive cannot be restored to a new technology hard drive or an SSD due to partition misalignment

If you want to use Win2Go 8.1 or 10 backups on an SSD and still maintain compatibility with your XP backups, the SSD needs to be partitioned with disc management in Windows 8.1 or 10 before you install Windows XP, 8.1 or 10

ONLY use correctly partitioned SSD backups with the SSD and never restore them to a hard drive
ONLY use correctly partitioned hard drive backups with the hard drive and never restore them to a SSD
(you can lose data, have a slower drive and other problems if you ignore this warning)

Mark your backups for old hard drives OR New hard drives & SSDs to avoid confusion later on

Also, use a newer version of Acronis if you make backups to modern SSD's and hard drives
Acronis versions from 2015 - 2019 should be fine and "may" be free to use depending on the drive brand

If you use Windows 8.1 Enterprise trial, make a shortcut to disc manager
It will come in handy

Target
%windir%\system32\diskmgmt.msc

Start in
%windir%

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Best practices and configuration tip # 6312

I make a backup of Windows 8.1 Win2Go "BEFORE" it is online (before activation) using Acronis True Image

Why?

Because I can activate the backup on a different computer and a different drive if I want to and use it for 90 days (or more)

If you make a Win2Go backup that cannot be activated after it is restored, it is usually because the drive is brand new or recently wiped

You may need to install Win2Go to a new drive first, and then make a backup before you can restore and activate correctly every time

After a failed activation, I boot to a separate Windows drive and run Killdisk on the failed Win2Go boot partition

I only run Killdisk untill it reaches 1-2% instead of wiping the entire partition and this will let me create a new partition that activates correctly when I restore a valid backup (not a failed backup)

Simply making a new partition over the failed partition does not seem to work because..... MICROSOFT!
 
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Couldn't get Win2Go to work...says doesn't support the Windows 10 (1809)
But, on Tuesday, I pushed out the fast ring update that fixes the bugs in
the Oct fall update LOL.
 
They finally did it, ive been using windows xp on a pendrive for 12 years now, all you had to do back then was to inject usb drivers into the system before you install the whole thing, there was a project or two to make win 7 booteable from a pendrive but microsoft put them down. I had problems with the page file but there was a solution for that.
 
Mark Turner said:
Try WinToUSB or the manual creation method(s) for 1809.
Click to expand...
Well, what I ended up doing, was using Win2Go, on my VM (win7) in win10 and creating a win7 boot usb :):laughing:
For "some strange reason", it took a LONG time to create in the VM world LOL
 
I ran windows off a USB for a while, suffice it to say it's useful only as a short term option. It burned out the stick quickly.

My advice would be to do some research and find the stick with the maximum amount of rated write operations.
 
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It's the 4KiB random I\O benchmark figure that is important, not the Sequential Read or Write figure. Windows NTFS accesses files in 4K clusters. e.g. the Lexar P20 128GB USB 3.0 is very fast at large file transfers and it's spec is Sequential = 400MB/s Rd, 270MB/s Wr, but took almost ONE HOUR to boot to WinToGo. The 4K benchmark result was 0.01MB/s which explains why it was so slow.

I have found that the 4K benchmark figure needs to be over 1MB/s for usable performance.
 
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I've been using Windows to Go for some time now. It is as if we finally got back to the MS-DOS days where we could just put in a disk and boot just about any PC. Great tool for debugging hardware. I use the 32bit version as it runs on more hardware (I've got some old stuff). I put all the tools and drivers I need on a separate partition so that if I need to I can rebuild the Win Enterprise OS with a new image (as I just use the trial version).
 
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)
Click to expand...

please do a guide for running live linux from usb stick. I'm extremely satisfied with live OS such as puppylinux and linux lite.

recently fixed my client's food lab machine which runs on ubuntu with the help of regular usb 2.0 drive filled with linux lite OS. I just ran a fsck command for few minutes and problem solved.

also tried running puppylinux on an old acer laptop with busted HDD. it was years ago, but I remembered once loaded I can even pull out the stick as the OS is so small it fits inside a 1GB RAM. and everything works, the wifi audio etc.
 
Being able to boot Windows 10 from USB is pretty cool, but because of the slow access times, I'd rather have "Pc on a stick".

Intel Compute Stick CS325 and 525 has 64GB of storage and a speedy processor with 3 USB ports.

If I truly wanted to move my "corporate environment" around with me, I'd rather be able to turn any HDMI port on any monitor or TV into a "computer" than risk my data security or integrity on a USB stick.
 
QuantumPhysics said:
Being able to boot Windows 10 from USB is pretty cool, but because of the slow access times, I'd rather have "Pc on a stick".

Intel Compute Stick CS325 and 525 has 64GB of storage and a speedy processor with 3 USB ports.

If I truly wanted to move my "corporate environment" around with me, I'd rather be able to turn any HDMI port on any monitor or TV into a "computer" than risk my data security or integrity on a USB stick.
Click to expand...

Access time does not appear to be a problem on my Corsair GTX thumb drive

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Although hardware keyloggers in strange keyboards and motherboards are a problem, the best solution is a real notebook instead of the weak compute power of a "PC on a stick". This is because you would still need to bring your own keyboard and monitor anyway to avoid strange hardware threats and network attached TV's that have been compromised

The only REAL threats to bringing your own laptop would be running backdoored encryption like Bitlocker or running a fully updated Spyware Platform like Windows 7 / 8 or 10 on ANY network
 
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The average HDMI equipped television is not "compromised".

For example, I was on vacation in Manila and Seoul this summer and there was most likely no threat to any of my data.

A laptop is much, much larger. I have a usb and bluetooth keyboard and mouse that can both be chained to a PC on a stick. The performance on a mini PC or Stick PC is faster than you might think for basic work tasks, web browsing and email response.
 
So I cant use it as a usb stick after that like with a ubunntu persitant live os where I still have normal acces to the files ?

Because you said not to put it into a running pc than how can I remove it later?
 
Eden1506 said:
So I cant use it as a usb stick after that like with a ubunntu persitant live os where I still have normal acces to the files ?

Because you said not to put it into a running pc than how can I remove it later?
Click to expand...
You can't use it as a regular USB flash drive when it's formatted to boot windows.

Your best bet for an ultra portable Windows system is a PC-on-a-stick, a bluetooth keyboard and a bluetooth mouse with a big Micro SD card.
 
I have been trying to make a WTG usb for months now. I have tried multiple programs, methods, ISOs, and usb's, always ending in failure. Can you make and post a cloned image of a working one I can then put on a usb?
 
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