How can I transfer my current Windows 10 setup to a USB drive?
How can I transfer my current Windows 10 setup to a USB drive?
Hello,
I need to uninstall my current Win10 system without deleting it.
My setup has many installed applications, so I don’t want to reinstall everything.
I purchased a 512GB NVMe drive identical in size to my current one.
I attempted various methods: cloning with HBCD/MediaCat, win2usb, copying files, using disk2VHD on Ventoy, and creating a new VHD with VirtualBox on Ventoy.
Now I’m stuck. When I boot from the USB, the Win logo appears with a spinning dot ring, but it freezes.
What am I doing incorrectly? What steps are missing? There’s no FStab available on Windows.
Normal Windows OS isn't going to run from a USB stick. There is a specific version called "Windows to Go" that would but I don't think it caught on in the consumer side of the market. It dates back to Windows 8 Enterprise.
I see posts indication Rufus has a tool to make it work. I never have. YMMV.
The process is free when you start from scratch (install Windows directly onto a USB using Rufus or WinToUSB).
Converting your existing setup to USB will require payment, but this cost applies only to the conversion or cloning process.
https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/index.html
Compare the free and pro versions
Ensure your USB flash drive is fast enough; otherwise performance may suffer. No issues with SSD/NVME drives.
People believe Windows 10 is being phased out and they think switching to Win11 would be better, but their current Windows 10 setup is fine and they hesitate to abandon it entirely. Erica’s issue involves booting from a USB drive; she suggests creating a virtual machine with a cloned disk inside it. Modern computers support virtualization, making it simple to run a VM. If driver problems persist, using sysprep can help resolve them for VM use. Using Sysprep in Windows 10 - Petri IT Knowledgebase
This would imply I'd constantly need to install a win on the drives for a VM to function. I want Win fully removed from my PC, only accessible via USB—no USB, no Windows at all. Ventoy is working properly, with no hardware issues; the VHD isn't booting correctly inside it, even though it should. To check if disk2vhd is the issue, I made a new VHD using VirtualBox that behaves similarly. I'm curious about what's inside that VHD that blocks the boot process, possibly looking at something like fstab. ISO files work fine in Ventoy, but they take away the "live" feature (like saving your current session).
"Windows To Go"
- Booting from USB on Windows is a unique capability found only in Win10 Enterprise, which Microsoft has since discontinued. Other Windows versions cannot do this natively.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/p...o-...-questions
Currently, the option to boot from USB remains a workaround. As mentioned before, you can either use Rufus or WinToUSB for free to install it, or purchase the Pro version of WinToUSB to modify existing installations.