Windows 8 to go - on a USB stick

[Hopachi]

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.

You're welcome Wolfgang.
I Hope I was right about the boot files.

I'm gonna keep using the current usb 2.0 for now, since it's almost as fast as my 32gb Sandisk Cruser.

Good luck with the install.
Hopachi

 

[whs]

Just this minute I got my USB3 stick in the mail (from Newegg). This thing is fast. I bet this will work better.

 

[Hopachi]

The speed is amazing. This is 6.5x faster than mine now.

It should boot up in no time.
Also the write speed is light years further than 2.0 devices.

Thanks for the info

Hopachi

 

[whs]

What is also good with that stick is that the access time is 0.5ms (as per HD Tune). I am just now loading the 64bit Win8 from the virtual BD ROM - we'll see.

 

[NiFu]

I think the boot speed mainly depends on four factors:

• Speed ​​of the USB stick (especially 4 Kb range).
• Hardware (CPU: Single core, i3 or i5, etc. and available RAM).
• Background programs (antivirus, Skype, etc.)
• Started Windows 8 version (x86 or x64).

 

[jimbo45]

I think the boot speed mainly depends on four factors:

• Speed ​​of the USB stick (especially 4 Kb range).
• Hardware (CPU: Single core, i3 or i5, etc. and available RAM).
• Background programs (antivirus, Skype, etc.)
• Started Windows 8 version (x86 or x64).

Hi there

The Boot I/O device speed is indeed the MAJOR factor in boot up speed -- you can virtually ignore anything else in comparison -- I assume that these days there is always sufficient RAM to load the OS properly and run the system.

You can virtually IGNORE CPU power at this point. Note once you start running applications that's different --we are only discussing the BOOT UP mechanism.


To clarify this point as some might not quite understand how Boot works this is the basic principle.

When you switch on the machine the machine is HARDWARE wired to execute ONE BIOS instruction at a specific address in the built in BIOS (or even EFI).

This instruction says Load Block of data into RAM starting at address XXXX and execute first machine instruction at the address loaded.

This is the skeleton Loader code which now starts loading drivers etc from HDD / SSD and completing the boot process -- that's why it's called BOOTSTRAPPING since instructions one and two are required to get sufficient program code into the machine to start execution to load the rest of the OS and await first User input request..

So you can see BIGGEST factor in boot up time is the speed of the I/O device -- remember that at boot time there's very little heavy processing -- the Bios loads the bootstrap instruction to read sector XXXX from disk and execute it
Rec 2 then loads the rest of the boot program and the loader takes it from there where the drivers are loaded / initialized etc.

Only very late in the boot process does the CPU play a part in initializing the GUI (The "Windows" bit of Windows).

(Equivalent in Linux -- the system is basically all loaded before you start a GUI usually known as the 'X-Server').

A small netbook with a single core ATOM processor and an SSD won't take much longer to boot than a high powered laptop with an I7 core if the laptop is using a standard HDD.

(Always assuming not 100's of complex start up scripts a being run / servers started etc. For a typical "Bog standard W8 installation the internal drive rate is the biggest factor in boot time).

Cheers
jimbo

 

[whs]

The system (64bit) run really nice on the USB3 stick. I would compare the boot and execution to a 5400RPM laptop HDD. Because of the 0.5ms access time and the much higher R/W speed than a slow HDD, I had expected it to be faster, but that does not seem to be the case. I think that is because of the overhead in the USB3 bus.

I had already noticed that with imaging. An image to an eSata disk is faster than to a USB3 disk (everything else being the same). That is at first amazing because on paper the USB3 bus is faster than the eSata bus. But since no spinning disk can make use of either maximum speed, it is the overhead in the bus that comes to bear.

The biggest problem I have right now is a constant corruption of my Windows7 bootmgr by the Windows8 on the stick. Whenever I access the Win7 disk only indirectly with Win8 (in Computer or Disk Management), I corrupt my Win7 bootmgr and cannot boot win7 afterwards. I have to figure out what causes that.

 

[Hopachi]

(...) The biggest problem I have right now is a constant corruption of my Windows7 bootmgr by the Windows8 on the stick. Whenever I access the Win7 disk only indirectly with Win8 (in Computer or Disk Management), I corrupt my Win7 bootmgr and cannot boot win7 afterwards. I have to figure out what causes that.

Careful with those boot files.
It was after all a good idea to run "bcdboot" in a Win8 VM than in the Win7 host.

On a Win7 x64 (SP1 or not) base install, the Win8 x86 (Cons. Prev.) usb stick didn't messed any bootmgr here. It was tested on 3 different machines, all with Win7 (x64) as the main system with no problems after.

It depends if you had to run bcdboot with the used method.
What method did you used to apply the boot files?

 

[whs]

I used the cmd command: bcdboot F:\windows /s F: . You see any problem with that.

 

[Hopachi]

If the F: drive is your usb then I have no problem with that.

I ran it also (in Win8) but with the /f ALL paramater (don't know if it's really required or not => /f for forced I guess):

bcdboot f:\windows /s f: /f ALL

Worked well here.

Hopachi

 

[Coke Robot]

Quite honestly, if you'll be using Windows 8 To Go for like, Office programs or interwebbing, light stuff like that; there really isn't a need for USB 3.0. This is true especially considering many puters don't have USB 3 ports to begin with. I've used both Windows 7 and now 8 on a flash drive, and performance is spectacular for a flash drive. There are a few slowdowns here and there, but that's expected.

Also, very important, you MUST disable or stop the Disk Optimizer service from running from services.msc or from the GUI panel. It WILL defrag your USB drive needlessly. It doesn't improve performance at all and it reduces the life of the flash components. Also disable SuperFetch service as well, this is superfluous on flash. Hopefully by the end, Windows 8 To Go mimics Windows 8 on a SSD, by disabling the unneeded services and whatnot.

I also found this VERY helpful to counteract the fact that Windows 8 To Go will not let you install Windows updates or some software.
How to Make Flash Drive a Local Disk | eHow.com
This turns the flash drive from being detected by Windows as a removable drive into a local disk. This is the stickler for some software, and Windows updates. It doesn't change any performance, and you can still pop out the flash drive while Windows is running, and plug it back in and every goes back to normal. That is coolest thing EVER!!

 

[Hopachi]

Hi Coke Robot,

Yes a 2.0 usb is good enough for me too.

Also, very important, you MUST disable or stop the Disk Optimizer service from running from services.msc or from the GUI panel. It WILL defrag your USB drive needlessly. It doesn't improve performance at all and it reduces the life of the flash components. Also disable SuperFetch service as well, this is superfluous on flash.

I'm gonna disable those two also. Thanks for the tips.

Ok, I cannot install updates also, thanks for the link.

Regards
Hopachi

 

[Kodi]

Just a word of warning.
Be very careful trying to make your USB Stick a local drive, I ruined one brand new USB3 stick and I am sure I followed the instructions correctly.

 

[whs]

The funny thing is that there is no 'All' parameter in the bcdboot command description. It is amazing that it worked for you. cmd is usually very fussy with invalid parameters.

 

[Coke Robot]

Just a word of warning.
Be very careful trying to make your USB Stick a local drive, I ruined one brand new USB3 stick and I am sure I followed the instructions correctly.

How so? I've had my USB drive last with Windows 7 though 8 since last October I believe and the USB was recognized as a local drive.

 

[whs]

Just a word of warning.
Be very careful trying to make your USB Stick a local drive, I ruined one brand new USB3 stick and I am sure I followed the instructions correctly.

How so? I've had my USB drive last with Windows 7 though 8 since last October I believe and the USB was recognized as a local drive.

Does anybody understand what might have happened to that stick?

 

[Kodi]

The Drivers did not install properly

 

[whs]

Hmm, that would be a problem indeed.

 

[whs]

The biggest problem I have right now is a constant corruption of my Windows7 bootmgr by the Windows8 on the stick. Whenever I access the Win7 disk only indirectly with Win8 (in Computer or Disk Management), I corrupt my Win7 bootmgr and cannot boot win7 afterwards. I have to figure out what causes that.

Looks like I cured this problem. I usually keep the bootmgr on C. I have now created a seperate 400MB partition on my Win7 SSD and moved the Win7 bootmgr there. Now the Win8 on the stick does not seem to muck it up any more. But I am still not sure what caused the problem in the first place.

 

[Kodi]

Yes, but I was lucky it was only one day old with a 12 month warranty.
I am waiting for the replacement and this time I will leave it as an external drive.