Windows 8 to go - on a USB stick

whs

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After several failed attempts I have finally managed to get Windows 8 on a USB stick - and it runs, though slowly. At first I had followed several guides from the web, but none of those worked for a variety of reasons. So I made my own concoction and finally got it to work.

The only mistake I made was to use a USB2 stick with 30/15MB R/W speeds. That is just too slow. I have now ordered a fast USB3 stick and will see whether that will make a difference - it should.

If some of you are interested in the setup procedure (it is a bit involved), let me know. But you should have a fast 16GB USB stick. Then I make a tutorial about 'my' procedure. At least I know now that this is working.
 

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We have a thread HERE
 

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Hi there
When you try and install a product like Office how does one get round the "Activation Prompt" when you boot your USB stick on to a different machine.

I've got Office 2010 (legit with a MAK key) but ist still prompts when I put the USB stick in to a new machine -- and prompts again when I put the stick back into the original Machine.

No prob currently -- but unles MS can issue some "Portable products" the usefulness of the "Windows to Go" will be drastically reduced -.

I'm currently also using a bootable Linux distro with W8 as a VM on it. This is genuinely portable as I don't have to re-activate various products --the VM "hardware" is constant.

I'd still like to use the Windows to go Natively as the overhead of a VM on a USB stick is not negligable.

Sandisk USB sticks seem nice and fast for the Windows to go stuff even if they are slightly more expensive. a USB3 version would be even better.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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I have now ordered a fast USB3 stick and will see whether that will make a difference - it should.
What speed did you ordered ?

I have two USB 3.0 sticks:
16 Gb with 80/20 MB R/W speed
Windows 8 to go installation time: 50 min.
Windows 8 speed: Good

32 Gb with 70/30 MB R/W speed
Windows 8 to go installation time: 135 min.
Windows 8 speed: Very slow

Remark: Both sticks show at USB 2.0 ports 30/20 MB R/W speed
 

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I ordered this USB3 stick Newegg.com - Lexar JumpDrive Triton 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Model LJDNV16GCRBNA We'll see how this works. Should be here the end of the week.

Jimbo, what stick are yoiu using and how is the performance. With my USB2 stick it is just too slow. But although it is specified at 30/15, the measurements are a lot slower and especially the 4K nums are dismal. So it is no fun.

2012-03-20_0230.png
 

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I have no plans at all to use this, but I am very curious to know how the heck does Windows boot and work in this "to go" scenario without the proper drivers for the specific machine that the USB stick is plugged into? People have problems finding drivers for a normal Windows setup, so it has me wondering. Anyone know?
 

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GMan, I think it is the beauty of the WAIK - at least in my scenario. I had no trouble moving it from my Dell desktop to my Toshiba laptop. SIW2 would probably know the details.
 

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Here I have two USB 3.0 sticks. And even if "Crystal Disk Mark" shows nearly same values they are totally different in speed with "Windows 8 to go".

With the "A-Data" I can't work with "Windows 8 to go": Most times I have lags of 1 to 5 minutes before "Windows 8 to go" reacts on a mouse click.

That’s because the "A-Data" stick has a performance gap with 4 and 8 kb blocks.

With the "Extrememory" stick I can work very well with "Windows 8 to go" - and that even the "Extrememory" has slower transmission rates with other block sizes.
 

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My Computer

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I ordered this USB3 stick Newegg.com - Lexar JumpDrive Triton 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Model LJDNV16GCRBNA We'll see how this works. Should be here the end of the week.

Jimbo, what stick are yoiu using and how is the performance. With my USB2 stick it is just too slow. But although it is specified at 30/15, the measurements are a lot slower and especially the 4K nums are dismal. So it is no fun.

View attachment 4737

Hi there
A SANDISK Cruzer 32GB stick -- works fine.

Mind you the HOST machine also has an SSD so that might make a difference when accessing "Normal Windows" disks.
My Host machines also have 4,8 and 16GB memory so once the OS is loaded the uSB doesn't have to be accessed very much.

You Could speed it up by assigning the paging file on to a "proper" disk after the initial boot.

I'm certainly not disappointed with the performance at all -- although running Photoshop took a while to load !!!
processors are i5 / i7 so basic machines are quite fast anyway.

I'll have a go on a Netbook tonight --but even my netbook has 4GB RAM --RAM is cheap enough so why stint to 1 GB in a machine --even older DDR2 RAM modules are available in SINGLE units of 4GB so even a single slot machine will allow you to have 4GB RAM.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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Hello there

This: Ordering "Windows to Go": how to create a bootable Windows 8 USB thumb drive
method worked fine on my 16gb 2.0 stick.

It boots in less than a minute, which I find pretty good for a 2.0 stick. (the first boot in his life took 15minutes with configuring hardware, setting up user and config stuff)

I's CP x86 and it uses 5.5gb of the 15gb available.

I didn't manage to install Office yet, I installed Virtualbox (with compatibility mode: Win7 and run as admin otherwise no luck for me)

I've used some customized live Linux setups on usb till now, Portable XP (BartPE) and portable Vista (VistaPE) but the official Win8 does a great job on usb.


Regards
Hopachi
 

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Hello there

This: Ordering "Windows to Go": how to create a bootable Windows 8 USB thumb drive
method worked fine on my 16gb 2.0 stick.

It boots in less than a minute, which I find pretty good for a 2.0 stick. (the first boot in his life took 15minutes with configuring hardware, setting up user and config stuff)

I's CP x86 and it uses 5.5gb of the 15gb available.

I didn't manage to install Office yet, I installed Virtualbox (with compatibility mode: Win7 and run as admin otherwise no luck for me)

I've used some customized live Linux setups on usb till now, Portable XP (BartPE) and portable Vista (VistaPE) but the official Win8 does a great job on usb.


Regards
Hopachi

This is a little different method than the one I used. A 1 minute boot is good. My boot is 2 minutes, but my stick is very slow. A faster stick is in the mail and should be here any day. Can you run your stick thru Atto and tell us what your read/write nums at the 4K blocksize are. Thanks, W.
 

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Hi there
Is there any way of stopping OFFICE trying to activate if I boot the USB stick on a different machine -- It's an Enterprise MAK version so shouldn'tr in theory run out of activations --but seeing what MS are doing to squeeze technet users in limiting keys etc "anything is possible" and without a working copy of Office I might just as well "Bin" the machine.

Windows to go only makes sense if it IS windows to go and say as an external consultant you can use your OS on a variety of machines - particularly as some work places haven't even got around to XP yet (some still using W2000) -- never mind even THINKING about W7 or W8 yet.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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Hi Wolfgang,

This is the 2.0 usb I used.
It's a Integral 16gb, pretty cheap which i got for 24 euro 2-3 years ago (the prices dropped since then):
16gb-integral-usb.png
It's obvious that his a bit lazy at writing data, but i'm glad with the read speed (beats a Kingston DataTravaler 16gigs at read speed).
I don't have any usb 3.0 ports yet so i'm gonna stick with the 2.0 usb stick(s).

Hopachi
 

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Hi Wolfgang,

This is the 2.0 usb I used.
It's a Integral 16gb, pretty cheap which i got for 24 euro 2-3 years ago (the prices dropped since then):
View attachment 4888
It's obvious that his a bit lazy at writing data, but i'm glad with the read speed (beats a Kingston DataTravaler 16gigs at read speed).
I don't have any usb 3.0 ports yet so i'm gonna stick with the 2.0 usb stick(s).

Hopachi
Thank you for posting the measurements. This is exactly the same as mine (mine is even a tad faster - at 4K). Now I am really starting to wonder why my boot is so much slower. I have to investigate that. Maybe I try the method you used to install Win8 - but I think I tried it once and for some reason it did not work.
 

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Hi Jimbo,

I'm not sure with Office mak key but in case of Windows To Go I have to activate it on every pc (hardware changes/licence stuff).
Maybe it's the same thing with Office?

I know, this not something normal users should do every time they boot.

Cheers
Hopachi
 

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Thank you for posting the measurements. This is exactly the same as mine (mine is even a tad faster). Now I am really starting to wonder why my boot is so much slower. I have to investigate that. Maybe I try the method you used to install Win8 - but I think I tried it once and for some reason it did not work.

On some pc's it's slower than 1 minute, it depends. It's also a fresh install and maybe it will get slower with more apps installed.
Writing files on it: no way, I prefer not to since it's very slow as the benchmark predicts.

Did you tried that the method on Windows 8 or Win7 ?

Thanks
Hopachi
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP Envy DV6 7250
    CPU
    Intel i7-3630QM
    Motherboard
    HP, Intel HM77 Express Chipset
    Memory
    16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel HD4000 + Nvidia Geforce 630M
    Sound Card
    IDT HD Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    15.6' built-in + Samsung S22D300 + 17.3' LG Phillips
    Screen Resolution
    multiple resolutions
    Hard Drives
    Samsung SSD 250GB + Hitachi HDD 750GB
    PSU
    120W adapter
    Case
    small
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    laptop cooling pad
    Keyboard
    Backlit built-in + big one in USB
    Mouse
    SteelSeries Sensei
    Internet Speed
    slow and steady
    Browser
    Chromium, Pale Moon, Firefox Developer Edition
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    That's basically it.
Did you tried that the method on Windows 8 or Win7 ?
I installed Win8. But the installation I did on my Win7 system. The laptop where I am running the stick has an i5 and 6GB of RAM. So that is a relatively fast system.
 

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I also have i5 laptop. I did the install on my Win7 too.... but the boot installation files (bcdboot command) I did them on Win8 DP x86 in a VM since my Win7 is x64 and I thought that it will write x64 boot files instead of x86 and mess it up.

So I plugged the stick, attached it in the DP virtual machine, runned the command (bcdboot) with succes and unplugged it again. It worked directly on first reboot.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 10 x64
    Computer type
    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP Envy DV6 7250
    CPU
    Intel i7-3630QM
    Motherboard
    HP, Intel HM77 Express Chipset
    Memory
    16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel HD4000 + Nvidia Geforce 630M
    Sound Card
    IDT HD Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    15.6' built-in + Samsung S22D300 + 17.3' LG Phillips
    Screen Resolution
    multiple resolutions
    Hard Drives
    Samsung SSD 250GB + Hitachi HDD 750GB
    PSU
    120W adapter
    Case
    small
    Cooling
    laptop cooling pad
    Keyboard
    Backlit built-in + big one in USB
    Mouse
    SteelSeries Sensei
    Internet Speed
    slow and steady
    Browser
    Chromium, Pale Moon, Firefox Developer Edition
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    That's basically it.
Aha, there may be the problem. Next time I will use the x64 Win8. Thanks for descibing the way you did it.

Maybe that's why I had all those 'Errors' in the Event Viewer when I looked at the Event Id 100.
 

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