Windows 10: can i install windows 10 onto a usb

I want to know if it is possible to install windows 10 onto a usb drive so that i can boot to it instead of a hard drive

:)

 

Can I Install the Windows 10 Upgrade onto a Windows 7 RAID configured PC?

Hello I was looking to upgrade to windows 10. My PC has Windows 7 home edeition and is I believe RAID 0 Configured. I have never installed a copy of windows in a RAID configurement before.

My Question is will the installation of Windows 10 take care of things automatically or is there something I would need to do

Thank you

 

Can I Install the Windows 10 Upgrade onto a Windows 7 RAID configured PC?

Hi,

Thank you for your interest in Windows 10.

I suggest you to post your query at Microsoft® TechNet Forums
where we have experts in RAID configured computers:

Technet forums - Windows 10 IT Pro

Please do let us know if you need further assistance, we’ll be glad to assist you

 

I believe it is called WindowsToGo, but I haven't ever ready that it works well.

 

Windows 10 - Setup and Run on USB Flash Drive - Windows 10 Forums

You may give it a try.

 

WOW, fast response and thank you I will try it.

 

This is easier

UEFI boot manager, Windows To Go Creator, All-in-One Microsoft Windows Setup software - The EasyUEFI Development Team

Download tool, use it to put iso on usb stick - that's it.

Note: you can only do legacy boot on a usb flash drive unless special wintogo drive.

 

Yep! Just now added Windows 7 to my USB hard drive. It has Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, Windows 10 Home 32-bit. And Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit is finishing up installing after the reboot into Windows 7. It's not the fastest in the world, but it is pretty cool!

 

How have you installed multiple versions?

 

Separate partitions on the USB hard drive.

 

I was not clear - are these each legacy bios installs ie only need one partition each and how do you select which one to boot?

 

Yes, it is set up as MBR and legacy booting. I used the WinToUSB program. I made 3 partitions. Part 1 was the "system" partition to hold the boot files, set as active. Partition 2 was for Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. Partition 3 was for Windows 10 Home 32-bit. The first install went as expected, selected Part 1 for the system partition for the boot files, partition 2 to install the OS to.

Then when I tried to install the second OS, I originally tried the same thing, Part 1 as the system partition and part 3 to install the OS to. WinToUSB complained that there was already an OS installed. So I changed it to part 3 for both the system partition and the OS partition, and that went fine, but that set part 3 as active.

I then manually changed back to part 1 as the active partition. Booted it into Windows 10 Pro, and used BCDBOOT command to add the Windows 10 Home 32-bit to the boot menu.

I was then going to do the same thing to add Windows 7 to a 4th partition in exactly the same way, and I actually got it installed, added to the boot menu, and booted into it, but after I created a user account Windows 7 complained about not starting the login server and could load user profile. I didn't really want to mess with it too much, so I just scrapped the idea of adding Windows 7 to it.

 

Ah I see that now. Thanks for this - I wonder if it would be possible with UEFI - I shall have to experiment now you have given me the basic idea☺.

Actually, your approach would make a neat tutorial.

 

Hi,

If by special wintogo drive you understand a flash drive that is seen by W10 as a disk as opposed to the typical removable sticks and provided it's pretty fast (say read/rite well over 300mb/s) then it will work as a wintogo drive.
Most manufacturers that offer certified Wintogo usb drives sell these for silly money and some aren't even all that fast either.

Mine is a MushkinVentura Ultra 120Gb which is probably the fastest you can get and it's not overly expensive.

Wintogo comes with some restrictions though. No hibernation or sleep modus, for instance. Plus you must shutdown the system before you can unplug it.
The advantage is that if its installed to both support bios and UEFI then you can plug it in on most computers and it should still work just fine.

If TS only wants to boot from a usb stick without it having windows installed on it then that's something else altogether.

Cheers, *Wink

 

I managed to do the same with UEFI. If anything it is slightly simpler as you do not have to mark partitions active.

It took me a while to get the bcdboot syntax correct, and struggled until I realised I had to boot to a Winpe environment but go there.

Basic steps

1) partition hard drive using script like this

rem == CreatePartitions-UEFI.txt ==
rem == These commands are used with DiskPart to
rem create two partitions needed for wintousb
rem for a UEFI/GPT-based PC.
rem ============
rem adjust disk number to suit eg if one internal drives most likely n=1, 2 drives n=2 etc
rem use list disk first
rem WARNING if you do not get this right you could wipe wrong disk
select disk 2
clean
convert gpt
create partition efi size=360
format quick fs=fat32 label="System"
assign letter=S
rem == Create the Windows partition ==========
create partition primary
format quick fs=ntfs label="Windows"
assign

2) install windows (10 in my case) using wintousb 3.0

3) shrink windows partition from disk management and create new partition and initialsie an ntfs volume (could have done it in diskpart but then I would have had to mess around with sizes)

4) install next windows (8 in my case) in new partition overwriting EFI partition

5) boot from win 10 usb drive, get to command prompt and use bcdboot command to add first OS boot entry back (which was overwritten).

I then went all round the houses doing adding virtual hard drives as well which also worked.

Once I worked out steps and syntax of commands, it worked very well.