Windows 10: Are installed Windows interchangeable between SATA, USB, and NVMe?

Windows can be installed via SATA on HDD or SSD, via USB on HDD, SSD, or USB flash drive, or via NVMe on SSD. But are these installations interchangeable? For example, can Windows be installed via SATA and then used via USB? Activation might be the hiccup.


I'm asking about Windows 10, but I would like to know the answer for 7 and 8.1. Assume the installation involves a valid activation code.

:)

 

Windows 10 installer don't detect NVMe drive

I have 2 drives:

• disk1 (SATA SSD, with Ubuntu 16.04)
  • partition1 (sda1: flag /boot)
  • partition2 (sda2: flag /home, encrypted by LUKS)
• disk2 (NVMe SSD)

So, the goal is to install Windows 10 on disk2 and boot it from GRUB (which is on sda1).

What is the problem ?

In disk-choose step, disk2 is missing. However Ubuntu 14.04 installer "see" this disk, so I assume that is software issue, rather than my hardware.

What I tried to solve this problem ?

• loaded Samsung NVMe drivers from this thread
• patched Windows image using DISM tool by adding 2 updates. I followed this guide
• tried to run Windows 10 installed on USB stick to install it

All of them failed.

Please help me to solve this issue.

 

Installing windows off of a USB stick

Step By Step from vista:
From admin cmd prompt

1. diskpart
1a. list disk
2. select disk 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
3. clean
4. create partition primary
5. select partition 1 (replace 1 with your usb drive)
6. active
7. format fs=fat32
8. assign
9. exit

Copy Windows Vista's DVD ROM content to the Flash Drive

xcopy d:\*.* /s/e/f e:\ (d being your vista cd and e being your usb stick)

And that's it, boot off your usb disk

 

Use bootloader from a SATA disk to boot Windows installation on a NVME disk

I've managed to get the system booting from the NVME some other way:

1. Converted the NVME to GPT using MBR2GPT.EXE
2. Hacked NVME support into the bios