- Messages
- 182
- Location
- Portland, Oregon, USA
I was recently messing around with installing Windows 8 on an external USB 3.0 HDD (NOT a flash drive) (How To Install Windows 7 On USB Flash Drive or External Hard Drive), and found website that showed a method for doing so by way of a "NT6 Fast Installer". I tried many times to get it to work and just when I was about to give up it finally succeeded. I rebooted into the external drive (unplugged my internal HDD) and it finished installing successfully. After booting/logging in for the first time I noticed that performance was near-native to what it would be if you ran it from an internal HDD. Games even ran well. But I noticed that there was only 1 partition and no System Reserved, and it appeared that the boot files were located on the C drive.
So my question is, on a regular 8 installation to an internal HDD, how can you delete System Reserved and move the boot files to the C drive? Is there any advantage in doing so (or disadvantages)? I just figured that with a C drive and a System Reserved that makes 2 primary partitions out of an available 4 being taken up, by having everthing on C you would only have 1 primary partition and 8 would still work. The steps listed at the above website are meant for 7 and Vista, but I tested them to the tee and they worked without modification on 8. I just had to flag the partition as active/bootable before booting into it for the first time, or else it would throw an error. I know alot of people think that it cant be done or is hard to do, but it can. But that's not what I'm trying to prove. It essentially amounts to being almost the same thing, if not exactly the same, as Windows To Go, except that you're installing via an unofficial method since the official installer wont allow installation to a USB HDD.
Thanks for any help!
So my question is, on a regular 8 installation to an internal HDD, how can you delete System Reserved and move the boot files to the C drive? Is there any advantage in doing so (or disadvantages)? I just figured that with a C drive and a System Reserved that makes 2 primary partitions out of an available 4 being taken up, by having everthing on C you would only have 1 primary partition and 8 would still work. The steps listed at the above website are meant for 7 and Vista, but I tested them to the tee and they worked without modification on 8. I just had to flag the partition as active/bootable before booting into it for the first time, or else it would throw an error. I know alot of people think that it cant be done or is hard to do, but it can. But that's not what I'm trying to prove. It essentially amounts to being almost the same thing, if not exactly the same, as Windows To Go, except that you're installing via an unofficial method since the official installer wont allow installation to a USB HDD.
Thanks for any help!
My Computer
System One
-
- OS
- Windows 8.1 Pro x64, Windows Server 2012 R2 x64
- Computer type
- Laptop
- System Manufacturer/Model
- Lenovo G700
- CPU
- Intel Core i7-3632QM, 2.20 GHz
- Motherboard
- Lenovo
- Memory
- 6 GB DDR3
- Graphics Card(s)
- NVIDIA 720M, Intel HD 4000
- Monitor(s) Displays
- 1 monitor
- Screen Resolution
- 1600x900 (max)
- Hard Drives
- 1 TB HDD (5400 RPM), 1.5 TB HDD (5400 RPM) installed in a 12.7mm disc drive caddy
- Case
- Lenovo
- Keyboard
- Lenovo
- Mouse
- Laptop/notebook keyboard/touchpad
- Internet Speed
- It varies, since I'm mobile most of the time
- Browser
- Chromium (the open-source browser which Google Chrome is derived from)
- Antivirus
- Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, Spybot, Privatefirewall
- Other Info
- I will add more information here later