How to install a Windows OS (WinToUSB) to a relatively good USB stick I bought not long ago.
What a bad idea that was. A whole damn hour (I’m doing it for the second time, since on the first time I thought “HM, Maybe I inserted it into a 2.0 slot. I should unplug and start over”) to just write it to the USB. And then it goes into “Getting started”(that one I yet to experience how long takes).
So my question is - will I better fair with a SSD (which I need to buy, otherwise I wouldn’t be asking), connected through an external housing (has separate power, and is USB 3.0)?
A bit different scenario. I am going for a bootable Windows from a remote device scenario (Windows-to-Go as people call it).
This is one of those rare cases where I have a linux machine targeted for work, which I built a month ago, and still have frustrating issues, which are most likely related to 9900x and/or MSI x870 chipset board (and to cross out Linux, I need to see how windows works… without installing it).
If performance is cause, possible given this workload is not something cheap drives are designed to handle. But might be windowstogo specific issue, windows being windows an WTG being rather exotic fuctionality.
Value preposition of “fast” sub stick was iffy decade ago due to droping prices of external ssd drives with full fledged controllers and decent thermals.
Now it guaranteed loss for usb drives, so why not cost cut existing design to the bone? Then you got fast usb 3.0 drives that throttle and die under writes that unless they are short and sequential.
Samsung T?? series of external drives are my go to for external storage if I dont want to deal with modular product. Just buy them on firesale, they are cyclical product for some reason.
If its enclosure path, get something modular and well designed for cooling like SATECHI
Sort the database by score and open test details. Many drives are unable to even finis AS SSD 1 GB 4k random write test at all. As in we are talking about sub 0,01 MB/s effective throughput.
Thats not uncommon scenario for system drive, even more during inital setup.
My headache is that I want to plug a “test drive” without swearing for the next hour in removing the m.2 shield(or even better - plugging a sata power), and then back.
And I really wanted to avoid the whole thing. But the instabilities I’m having with my 9900x are finally getting on my nerves, so I want to do a check with windows.
Oh no. I’m fed up with those fancy candy wrappers. Better to get everything done by myself.
Very similar to what I ordered a second ago(above that was only RGB Asus in terms of price) …
Fyi, there are toolless designs with manual locking mechanism liker the satechi. Also sort by enclosure weight, its proximate measure to how good heatsink it is.
I would avoid noname variant unless there is physical review that checks basic design. Some are truly shitty, as in little to no thermal interface with enclosure itself.
For reference, SATECHi usb-c m.2 enclosure was about 100€ with quality cable included.
On my Lenovo laptop, I have Linux on the internal nvme drive. For my windows needs I’ve been using windows to go (installed via Rufus), for over a year.
Windows to go is on an nvme drive in a dockcase enclosure which has a capacitor with 10 seconds of backup power. Additionally when power gets low, the case controller sends a signal telling the drive to flush it’s volatile data to safe storage. These have an updated controller that don’t have the early issues that many nvme enclosures had. The basic enclosure is fine for lower power nvme drives, the slightly more expensive one is better at providing power for power hungry drives (which is honestly the wrong drive for this use case)
I then connect the enclosure to a separately powered usb hub.
The thing with usb ssd “drives” is they tend to be lower quality and have no or dumb maintenance going on. So the die or corrupt under any workload that’s not writing a few gb a few times a year.
Using nvme drives fixes that, but I’ve found they really hate suddenly losing power. I’ve found with with a few drives over the years (intel and especially Samsung) that drives can just stop showing up after a power interruption. Even intel’s old 16gb optane sticks do this.
Fixing this requires a power cycle of the drive, possibly requiring the removal of the drive from it’s enclosure.
Basically my setup works pretty well, the performance is “good enough” for typical desktop use (I wouldn’t try to edit video though, or compiling large projects).
The biggest issues are your typical bullshit with laptops/usb port power/sleep. Sometimes the system won’t wake from sleep, requiring a force off and reboot. The drive/data seems to be fine though.
As always, if there’s data you care about on the drive, set up daily automatic backups somewhere. SSDs can and will just fucking die without warning.
This definitely goes into my pink colored diary…
2! Two hours+ it took to launch the system. But even then it was a “Please wait” animation, on which I fully gave up with this idea.
Spotted your message a bit too late. Oh well…
On the other hand there is one big BUT( T ), where I already spent somewhere close to 100 USD on the m2 and enclosure, just to test out the theory that there will be no problem with the system on windows.
And I do realize that this tool will be quite of use in similar future scenarios.
BUT - 100$ on this endevour.
If windows will show that the problem is only a linux thing, next part will be ordering a separate pci-e card for WiFi+BT(Mostly BT), because with things like “Daily calls” I’ve head my cup of sh…tea with wired headsets (to the point that I utterly hate even the thought of it).
This is another ±60 USD.
If not, I have two options:
Send the mobo to the retailer (actually a good guy, so no problems with that part). This will leave me without a PC for work (haha)… and I will have to return to the corporate laptop (which frustrated me to the point where I actually took out 1.500 USD from my own pocket and with the wording “Never F again…” built the system).
Option TWO… Buy a new mobo from a different vendor. Just because I managed to find the thread of MSI forums related to X870 Tomahawk… and spotted a few of the things I dealt with. Making me believe MSI and AMD arent actually good friends…
And I do understand how option two sounds (kid got money!). And the funny part here is that the mobo (unless I will decide to spend a few hundraid more just to be safe on the side of the board being actually good…) will cost me 300-400 USD (and I already spent a 100 + a workaround fix with a separate card).
This one I missed. And actually never considered the part of power backup (which actually makes sense). Although my scenario is simpler - have a “portable” windows OS for the scenario of performing testing of a system (and maybe external tooling for possible malware).
The enclosure looks cool. Although not in stock for my region (and, since I got pissed off to a point where I actually tried running a win os from a flash drive… I don’t want to lose that momentum with waiting for it to return to stock).
Well. This is actually concerning. Although most of use case is for home. And I do have a UPS running.
Plus there was this one sad experience I had last year - everyday power outages (some of them unexpected). For the period of almost a year my system was powered off suddenly.
I do realize that what you are speaking about is unplugging the drive without safe removal, and not sudden poweroff’s, where the PSU handles the problem.
For that one I have a separate stashed SSD drive in a bulky SSD/HDD enclosure, which has its own power supply.
I am now thinking on how to actually install Windows on that drive (I do acknowledge the stupidity of the question).
I haven’t played with multi-boot for quite a few years, but from what I remember from the days of win 2000, Win OS installer scans for existing installations, creating(or writing to an existing?) bootloader.
