If I’m not mistaken 64GB drives, and up, are formated as exFAT not FAT32. And thus handle files larger than 4GB without needing to be reformated to NTFS.
I just bought this flash drive and what do I find? That it doesn’t work as a Windows To Go host!
It’s incredible that SanDisk hasn’t released a tool to make it compatible it this “technology”. Not only enterprise users are interested in personal workspaces. Even my **bleep**ty Kingsten DataTraveler has an unofficial tool that can convert the drive into fixed.
The VHD trick is fair enough, but I’m sure it has a severe performance penalty.
Please, someone to shed a bit light on the topic. This drive would be wonderful it wasn’t for this.
I just bought this flash drive and what do I find? That it doesn’t work as a Windows To Go host!
Didn’t read the Microsoft Windows to Go hardware webpage?
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Hh831833.aspx#wtg_hardware
Years ago SanDisk did make a drive that was fixed for a short while but they stopped making them, I assume because there wasn’t enough demand for them. And the architecture difference was much more than just flipping a bit.
Kingsten DataTraveler has an unofficial tool
Are you sure the “tool” isn’t just a driver to make the drive appear as a fixed drive, on the machine with the tool/driver installed? Or are you talking about bootice?
I have a Micro PC that came with an extremely small HD. I just bought a Sandisk Ultra 128gb and want to clone the HD onto it and always boot from it.
Will this have same issues ?
Possibly but not necessarily. You may have different problems. 1. Windows doesn’t support installing to a USB drive. 2. If you clone your Windows system from the hdd to the USB drive Windows may not run because the drive’s signature will be different than the installed drive’s signature.
A possible approach is to leave Windows on the hard drive but put all user files and folders on the USB drive. A Windows 7 system will run fine on a 40 GB hdd that way.
I just bought a Sandisk Ultra 128gb and want to clone the HD onto it and always boot from it. Will this have same issues?
Return it, if you can. W/O changing the flash card into fixed drive, witch is (except for user on page 2 of this thread) ATM impossible to do, you cannot make it as reasonable system drive. Yes, you can use ton’s of tricks, but in the end Windows will only see ONE partition on removable device, so, you are screwed.
I bought specificaly SanDisk with the naive hope, that I can use their utility to flip the switch to fixed, but no. That utility is old and it does not work on modern drives… so lame.
I had the same problem - purchased a Sandisk Extreme Pro 128GB to use as Win2Go and could not set it up, so I used this simple method.
Requirements:
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Download and install AOMEI Partition Assistant (Free edition).
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Obtain a cheap second USB flash drive which can be set up for Win2Go. I had a USB3 Sandisk Ultra Fit 128GB (bit slow), but an old USB2 TDK flash drive also worked (very slow).
Using AOMEI Partition Assistant for ALL the following steps:
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Create Win2Go on the second USB flash drive. There is no need to reboot and complete the Windows setup.
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Create Bootable media on the Sandisk Extreme Pro.
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Delete the newly created partition on the Sandisk Extreme Pro, leaving a hidden partition which we cannot see.
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Disk copy from the second USB flash drive to the Sandisk Extreme Pro.
Finally, remove the second USB flash drive and reboot the PC from Sandisk Extreme Pro. It should now boot successfully and complete the Windows installation.
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Incidentally, the disk copy function in AOMEI Partition Assistant is also a great way to make a backup of your USB Win2Go to another drive, but not when you are actually running the system from Win2Go. If you need to recover your system, simply use the same method in reverse.
I don’t think it is a good idea to use imaging backup software, because it is difficult/impossible? to recover using the their recovery media.
Did anyone find a good solution to flip the removable to fixed? I recently purchase a sandik ultra 128GB and I’m having the same issue.
I tried bootlt but it didn’t work.
I used flashboot from 2.3 and I can install windows 8, 8.1 enterprise edition onto the Sandisk CZ80 (showing up in win 7 as a removable drive) and can boot from it. However, windows 10 enterprise failed. Both windows 8 or 8.1 will no longer boot after windows update.
Thank you! this worked!
However, this thumb drive seems to slow in the range of 4KB blocks. Does anybody know how to improve the performance!?
Anyways, I’m looking for a better USB drive for Windows To Go. Could you please recommend me one that doesn’t experience so severe performance slowdowns?
