For the experiment used a $10 32 GB SanDisk from Walmart.
Windows 10 has been out for a year now and there are many things I get to learn about. One new trick was the ability to put Windows 10 on the USB stick and transported from one computer to another. In other words, a portable Windows operating system. And then I find out this feature was already in Windows 7 as well as Windows 8 and 8.1 and not just in Windows 10. However, there is a catch. Only certain versions of Windows 10 will do the portable USB trick.
Some investigation found there are third-party applications that will let you do the Windows on a stick thing with almost all versions of Windows 10 or Windows 8.
What I did not correctly understand was his need to have the Windows operating system already running on a computer before you make the USB stick with Windows on the USB. Even after reading over the articles I still didn't get it and I did it wrong.
At one point I couldn't get it to boot because I had another USB device plugged into my computer and it interfered with the boot up. And then I tried it on my old computer using Windows 7 and it took the longest time to build the USB stick. And can you guess what happened? What file it did boot up it booted up in the Windows 7 and not Windows 10. That's pretty messed up because I was using a Windows 10 install ISO. So, at that point I a realized I had to pay more attention to the documentation.
So finally I did it the way you're supposed to with a third-party program. The program I used was a rather large program that does a lot of other things besides making Windows on a stick. It took me a while to figure out where the option was they needed.
Anyway, I finally got it right and it does work. But it sure surprised me. The first time you boot up from the USB drive it goes to the installation process just like your or installing Windows on the hard drive. It even asked for the product key, which I did not have. As you know, you can go ahead and use Windows 10 without the product key with some restrictions. I just wanted to see if would work, so I went ahead and finish the installation without the using a product key.
After that experience I can say that it does work, but I was wrong about saying that you could do it straight from an old computer without an operating system. That part is not true.
You have to first install Windows 10 on some type of internal storage device before you can make it run on the USB stick. And you also have to have the installation ISO available as a file during the process of building the Windows on a stick thing. Took me a while to realize that that's what they meant.
Anyway, it doesn't work. But that me tell you that you don't want a slow USB flash drive. It takes forever to install on a slow USB drive. Maybe that is why Microsoft recommends that you use USB drives that have been certified by Microsoft. I didn't, and it was very, very slow to install.
But once installed, it does put up within a reasonable amount of time and now I have a USB stick that I can take over to a troubled computer and boot up Windows 10 off of the USB stick. So it will make a great repair tool for future use.
So there is my limited experience with putting Windows 10 on a USB stick. Again, I had to use a third-party software to get it to work for me. Doing It the Way, Microsoft recommends is just too difficult for me. I have a hard time with too much detail.
