0

My friend's birthday is coming up, me and some mutual friends are planning on building him a computer. I have been given the SSD and have been tasked with preparing it so it's ready to go asap (we are building the computer on his birthday) This would include installing Windows (10 or 11 both work), installing a few programs he uses, changing the settings to what he likes, etc.

I have the SSD in an external m.2 NVME enclosure, and was hoping to find a way to set the drive up through it without sacrificing anything. Rufus and windows to go seem like they may work. However, I see people warning against using windows to go as it is depreciated.

Would windows to go be alright to use? If not, what are my other options?

edit: My desktop unfortunately has no open m.2 slots.

Improve this question
3
  • I think the best time saving strategy is exactly the one you're trying to avoid: Install it normally after assembling.
    – ChanganAuto
    Commented May 8 at 8:14
  • I second. At least don't go further than the "image extraction and bootloader installation" part.
    – Tom Yan
    Commented May 8 at 10:34
  • Yeah, I think ultimately I'm just gonna install it after assembly, I was hoping that with program installation factored in it'd be faster to do it ahead of time but that doesn't seem to be the case
    – Ibraheem Masood
    Commented May 8 at 22:23

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

I have been given the SSD and have been tasked with preparing it so it's ready to go asap (we are building the computer on his birthday)

This may work, but I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble – e.g. you won't be able to easily pre-install drivers that way (unless you already know exactly what parts will be used), while on the real system they'll just show up from Windows Update all on their own. At the same time, if you do the installation on your own system, it'll end up picking up drivers for your GPU and other components – not a big deal if both have a similar-ish GPU, but e.g. you don't want AMD drivers to stick around if the destination system will have an nVidia, and so on.

Rufus and windows to go seem like they may work.

It's not just that Windows To Go is deprecated; it's also really not meant for that. The "To Go" system boots differently from a fully-installed system; it handles disks and drivers differently; etc. You won't be able to properly use it as a regular install.

edit: My desktop unfortunately has no open m.2 slots.

It probably has PCI Express slots, so get an adapter card and install the SSD there. (NVMe SSDs are literally just miniature PCI Express cards, so a 1-slot adapter card is practically pass-through.)

Even better, remove your current M.2 SSD and temporarily install the new SSD there, so that the Windows installer will not get confused about which system partition it's supposed to use, etc. (There's a possibility that you install the system to SSD B but it still boots from SSD A...)

Improve this answer
2
  • IIRC, Windows Setup always tries its best to make installations share "boot partition" (regardless of whether the "context" is UEFI or not). So if he can't disable or remove his own drive for the task, he better installs with e.g. dism and bcdboot right from the beginning...
    – Tom Yan
    Commented May 8 at 10:30
  • 1
    Windows To Go installations are not eligible to be upgrade to future builds, due to a registry key that exists, not a huge deal with Windows 10 but that would prevent future builds with Windows 11. Windows 11 builds while they don't expire like Insider Preview builds, eventually, do NOT receive any security updates. I wouldn't want to be that friend who receive a Windows installation that couldn't be updated. It takes less than 30 minutes to install Windows on a SSD.
    – Ramhound
    Commented May 8 at 13:34

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .