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10 years ago or so, I wanted to have a windows on a portable USB HDD. Windows 7 didn't want to be installed on USB-drives, but once it was installed you could m

10 years ago or so, I wanted to have a windows on a portable USB HDD. Windows 7 didn't want to be installed on USB-drives, but once it was installed you could modify it (edit a text file or so), to make it work. So I used a VM with the usb-drive as the HDD. That way Windows didn't knew it was being installed onto a usb-drive and everything worked fine.

ccouzens 5y ago
I've done the same to install Windows 10 to an external SSD (I don't want to divide my laptop's internal drive up between two different operating systems). This is the guide I used for making the SSD look like an internal hard drive https://ckirbach.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/how-to-add-a-physical-device-or-physical-partition-as-virtual-hard-disk-under-virt-manager/ https://ckirbach.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/how-to-add-a-physi... Once the first part of the installation was completed, I turned off the VM and booted the SSD from real hardware (after disabling the internal disk in the laptop's firmware to avoid anything unfortunate happening). Apart from being a little slower, everything works fine. I haven't yet been offered the windows 11 upgrade so I can't say if that will continue working.
- sysadm1n 5y ago
  Might try this. It would be great to have Windows To Go back. Is there a way to fool Windows into thinking it's a normal SATA hard-drive attached to the motherboard and not a USB one?
  - ccouzens 5y ago
    > Is there a way to fool Windows into thinking it's a normal SATA hard-drive attached to the motherboard and not a USB one? After the first part of the installation is done (the copying files from the ISO image/DVD/USB stick part), Windows 10 won't run a check that prevents C:\ being a USB drive. So I don't think there's any reason to fool it after that point. And before that point of the installation the virtual machine is there to fool it. When the drive is attached to the VM as per the linked instructions (in my comment above) Windows will see it as an internal drive. --- I have also tried Windows 11 using these same steps, but got a message saying that my (virtual) hardware didn't meet the requirements. I suspect it was the TPM module that was incorrect in the VM. Probably as more people try to run Windows 11, virt manager's support will improve (including the downstream distributions' copies).
sysadm1n 5y ago
I used Windows To Go[0] and you could put Windows 8 on an SSD or even a USB flash drive. I used to get random blue screens of death from this however, so stopped using it. Also: WTG is no longer supported by Microsoft, so we can't use it anymore. I like your hack of attaching an SSD to a VM. How do you do that though? Is there some procedure for doing that? I'd love to know! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go
- arendtio 5y ago
  Attaching a physical hard drive to a VirtualBox VM was straight forward back in the day. First guide I found is this: https://superuser.com/questions/495025/use-physical-harddisk-in-virtual-box#756731 https://superuser.com/questions/495025/use-physical-harddisk... However, making it possible to boot windows without the VM required some hacks and I neither know if they work for modern windows too nor what they were exactly.

ccouzens 5y ago

I've done the same to install Windows 10 to an external SSD (I don't want to divide my laptop's internal drive up between two different operating systems). This is the guide I used for making the SSD look like an internal hard drive https://ckirbach.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/how-to-add-a-physical-device-or-physical-partition-as-virtual-hard-disk-under-virt-manager/ https://ckirbach.wordpress.com/2017/07/25/how-to-add-a-physi... Once the first part of the installation was completed, I turned off the VM and booted the SSD from real hardware (after disabling the internal disk in the laptop's firmware to avoid anything unfortunate happening). Apart from being a little slower, everything works fine. I haven't yet been offered the windows 11 upgrade so I can't say if that will continue working.

sysadm1n 5y ago
Might try this. It would be great to have Windows To Go back. Is there a way to fool Windows into thinking it's a normal SATA hard-drive attached to the motherboard and not a USB one?
- ccouzens 5y ago
  > Is there a way to fool Windows into thinking it's a normal SATA hard-drive attached to the motherboard and not a USB one? After the first part of the installation is done (the copying files from the ISO image/DVD/USB stick part), Windows 10 won't run a check that prevents C:\ being a USB drive. So I don't think there's any reason to fool it after that point. And before that point of the installation the virtual machine is there to fool it. When the drive is attached to the VM as per the linked instructions (in my comment above) Windows will see it as an internal drive. --- I have also tried Windows 11 using these same steps, but got a message saying that my (virtual) hardware didn't meet the requirements. I suspect it was the TPM module that was incorrect in the VM. Probably as more people try to run Windows 11, virt manager's support will improve (including the downstream distributions' copies).

sysadm1n 5y ago

I used Windows To Go[0] and you could put Windows 8 on an SSD or even a USB flash drive. I used to get random blue screens of death from this however, so stopped using it. Also: WTG is no longer supported by Microsoft, so we can't use it anymore. I like your hack of attaching an SSD to a VM. How do you do that though? Is there some procedure for doing that? I'd love to know! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_To_Go

arendtio 5y ago
Attaching a physical hard drive to a VirtualBox VM was straight forward back in the day. First guide I found is this: https://superuser.com/questions/495025/use-physical-harddisk-in-virtual-box#756731 https://superuser.com/questions/495025/use-physical-harddisk... However, making it possible to boot windows without the VM required some hacks and I neither know if they work for modern windows too nor what they were exactly.