Windows 10: Anyone tried installing to SD card

I had that thought in the back of my mind too? How big is said SD card?

 

That's probably big enough for XP or maybe even windows 7. Do you have a valid product code/license for either to use for the install?

 

OK, go for it. Please let us know what OS you tried and if it worked.

 

I have XP already running on 160mb RAM (128 arrived today) on a spinny Hitachi 20gb disk I just need to attach the SD adaptor to my desktop for benchmarking and imaging from reflect (also arrived this morning).

 

Hi there

You CAN make Windows to Go to install to an SD (or any other removable device). The main problem of course is that if the BIOS doesn't load the driver on BOOT then the computer won't recognize the SD card until AFTER the OS loads so no go.

On an HP Proliant Gen 8 Microserver for example the BIOS can actually boot from an SD card so it will work in this case otherwise you will need to use Windows to go via a bootable USB device.

Whether the BIOS recognizes a card reader at Boot is a property of the machine - usually they don't although they do recognize USB sticks and external USB HDD's.

Windows to go will only boot from "Bootable" devices.

Running Windows also from an SD card isn't actually a good idea - writes will quickly degrade the card. Even using a USB stick isn't really a sensible option. A USB3 HDD makes perfect sense or even an old LAPTOP HDD with a SATA-->USB2 connector cable will yield adequate performance.

The Microserver has the SD boot possibility because it can make sense to use this for loading a tiny OS like Esxi which doesn't need to perform SD writes and then allows for 5 Bays to be used for attaching HDD's / SSD's and running a load of VM's - or even running a small Linux distro to do the same thing.

Explaining how Esxi works is well beyond the scope of the post or what the OP intended - however I thought I'd add it to show why in some cases (very particular) that an SD card is OK to be used for loading an OS - but normally not a good idea at all for things like Windows with a huge amount of WRITES - which really kills an SD card over a short period of time.

A micro SD card is a smart phone is usually OK because it's used in READ mode probably 95% of the time --Music for example - but an OS like Windows would be doing a whole slew of writes all the time - especially to temporary OS files / data areas / paging files.

(Creating / restoring images on an SD card is fine -- no probs there -- I have a Macrium backup W10 OS on my micro SD card on a smart phone - booting it of course is another issue as explained above).

Cheers
jimbo

 

Yeah, I know all that Jimbo, like I said, "The official Windows to Go utility will not install to removable media. I haven't bothered with any of the work around do it your self methods." I run Enterprise on my laptop. The official WTG will not install to a USB thumb drive that is flagged as removable media. The official certified WTG thumb drives have a bit set in the firmware so they show up as fixed disks. I can put my SD card in a USB card reader or the laptops built in card reader, it makes no difference. WTG will not use it. My laptop won't boot from the internal card reader anyway so I haven't pursued it any further. Same deal for my Kingston 64 gig HyperX USB 3 thumb drive, WTG will not use it. It will use my 5400 RPM IDE laptop drive in a USB enclosure though? Like that makes sense? Anyway, the OP has his in an internal IDE/PATA to SD card adapter. Totally different scenario. It's not even a WTG setup.

 

The SD adapter works on my desktop but it benchmarks slower than the spinny Hitachi Travelstar. It reads about 20 mb/s wherea the hitachi reads at about 28 mb/s and write speed is pretty slow at around 10 mb/s, hitachi again is faster especially at 4k read/write speeds, so held off putting it in the laptop.Currently bidding on a kingspec ssd (IDE) and according to the specs that should be faster but if I get it we will see.Trouble with the Hitachi it has 8 reallocated blocks which is not a good sign, but it was only 3 quid. I havent looked if the SD adapter has SMART.

 

Yeah, I think you have to go really high quality to get fast write times in an SD card. I have SSD's in my laptop and desktop. My Pi will only boot from a uSD card so that's what's used. I was using some basic Kingston uSD cards. I didn't think much of it until I used a SanDisk class 10 card. It was obvious just watching it boot up that it was much faster.

 

The SD card adapter HAS 4 SMART data fields including data wear and reallocated sectors so the adapter must save some spare sectors for reallocation of bad blocks. ALSO has red led power indicator and green activity led on the adaptor board.

 

I would think It should work SSD like then.

 

Well I have created an NTFS partition on the SD card and restored an Image from reflect and used partition assistant to extend the image to the full capacity of the SD card, just a shame it's slow.

 

Is it noticeably slow though? If you hadn't done the benchmark would you be able to tell it's actually slower than the hard drive? What's the make and model of the SD card?

 

I havent tried it in the laptop yet although benchmarking the spinny hitachi is 10 mb/s slower than on the desktop so may not be noticeable. Anyway waiting for a Kinspec 32gb IDE SSD to arrive and will stick that in the laptop.

 

Only 32 GB? SSD's have come way down in price, I think I would have gotten something a little bigger if I could.

 

You can install to SD/MicroSD, but you'll have to use the command line, the official installer will refuse to install to removable media. Google for GetWAIKTools. You can use imagex or dism to install from an install.wim file, then use bcdboot to install boot files. You'll also need to use bootrec command to install MBR if using legacy boot (not needed for UEFI). There's also the issue of possibly needing to prepartition the card.

Booting is another issue. Most PCs can't boot from regular size SD, but you can get MicroSD and plug it into an adapter, it should be recognized as a USB device. Or just use a USB3.0-capable stick. An external HDD will also work. Make sure your SD is really, really fast and you use a 3.0 port, or booting will be SLOW. I also recommend at least 64gb, preferably 128gb.

Drivers are another issue. Do you plan to use this on a single PC or on multiples? If single you can just install the drivers for that one PC and things should just work. If multiple then you'll need to just use the generic drivers already built into Windows.

Hope this helped!