Posts: 1,836
Registered: 07-24-2010
Re: Sandisk Extreme 64GB - make it a fixed drive?[ New ]
03-08-2015 06:19 PM - edited 03-08-2015 06:23 PM
You do realize that the drive will only appear to be Fixed on systems that have the diskmod.sys driver installed, right? On systems without the driver it will still be seen as Removable.
If you put Windows To Go on it does it boot?
I leave my previous post for reference.
I own a 32 Gb SanDisk Extreme USB stick. After several tries, trying to make the usb stick boot with Windows To Go (I have been successfully able to make it fixed with diskmod.sys and created my WindowsToGo stick using Rufus), it failed every single time to boot, only once it showed signs that it would work using MBR partition thype in Rufus and not GPT, but it hanged for 3-4 hours and I rebooted my laptop eventually.
Then, I stumbled upon WinToUSB which has a different approach. It creates a VHD drive on the USB drive and not applying the install.wim with expanded folder structure as every other tool out there do. For the last approach to work one needs a real proper fxed drive. And that is not available for SanDisk Extreme usb drives as SanDisk had a change of heart (poor heart) and reverted all newer drives’ bit and therefore making them removable again and not fixed drives as they were sold once.
So, for anyone’s interest, I have tested Windows To Go using Windows 8.1 Pro on my 32 Gb San Disk Extreme created with WinToUsb and it works amazing.
Of course one could build the flash drive using the VHD method only using Diskpart.exe and imagex.exe, but it’s a pain in the ass. Takes much much longer and several reboots are needed for it to work.
So go on and try WinToUSb !!! Results guaranteed.
kukubau
