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Between their highly customizable nature, lack of privacy-intrusive services, and zero forced updates, there are plenty of reasons to love Linux distributions. I also adore the live boot functionality that many distros tend to ship with, as it lets me get accustomed to their quirks and tinker with their built-in tools without spending extra time installing them on the machine. Better yet, plenty of Linux flavors support persistent folders (and even partitions) capable of saving any changes I make to the live boot environment even after I shut down the system, making them perfect for portable setups.
On paper, Windows 11 lacks such functionality, and you’re expected to install it on a dedicated boot drive. However, flashing tools have this feature called Windows To Go, which can turn any ol’ storage drive into a portable Windows 11 environment. I tried to use such a setup with a conventional USB flash drive a few years ago, but its terrible speeds and limited storage made it more of a fun gizmo than a functional Windows instance. So, I figured I could try flashing Windows To Go on an SSD this time, and it turned out incredibly well.
Since I wanted to prioritize speed and responsiveness above all else, I decided to use an NVMe SSD hooked up to an NVMe-to-USB adapter for this experiment. Likewise, I stuck to USB Gen 3.2 speeds across all my systems for this makeshift boot drive, as it’s the fastest USB port on my outdated motherboard. With Rufus providing the most painless Windows To Go configuration process, it’s the flashing app I used to arm my “portable” NVMe drive with Windows 11.
Once Rufus had finished working its magic, I plugged my Windows 11 drive into the USB slot (yes, I know how ridiculous that sounds) and, after fiddling with the BIOS startup options, forced my PC to use it as the main boot device. To my surprise, the system was able to load the initial Windows 11 configuration in around 5 minutes, which is significantly faster compared to 30+ minutes taken by my old flash drive-powered Windows To Go instance. With the OOBE settings configured, the system underwent another restart, though it took less than 2 minutes to load the Windows 11 lock screen.
Although I had some slight microstutters inside the lock screen, the Windows 11 UI worked surprisingly well. Of course, the resolution felt wonky, but that’s because I had yet to install the GPU drivers. After scouring the web for Nvidia drivers old enough to accommodate my aged GTX 1080 (which still works pretty well), I went with version 581.08. The unzipping process was slightly longer on my unconventional boot drive, while the installation part took roughly 20 minutes to finish. But before I could begin testing hardcore apps, I decided to reboot the system. That triggered Windows to install updates, and considering the trauma my USB-powered boot drive had inflicted on me, I figured I’d have to wait over an hour for my PC to boot again.
But as you’d expect from faster NVMe drives, the update process took another fifteen minutes to install. It definitely wasn’t as quick as the typical NVMe (even PCIe Gen 3) drive pools I’m used to, but it was far from a deal-breaker.
For general-purpose apps, I tried installing VS Code, Darktable, Blender, and Obsidian, which worked without any latency whatsoever. I also wanted to test this setup’s performance in games, so I began installing Steam. Unfortunately, this is where I ended up with my first crash, with the Windows error log revealing that the USB drive had somehow gotten disconnected. But I had no trouble installing Steam after a reboot, so I downloaded a couple of titles. Dead Space (Remake) ran at 60FPS with medium-high settings at 1080p, though the shader compilation took around 5 minutes to wrap up.
Other 3D titles, including Deadzone Rogue, Sekiro, and Helldivers 2 ran just as well, though I had to turn down the resolution for the behemoth Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Considering that my old flash drive-powered Windows 11 boot environment had trouble running anything besides simple 2D games, being able to run demanding games without major latency issues or abysmally long boot times was pretty surprising. But I still had one last test I wanted to carry out…
All it took was a little bit of tinkering and a whole lot of patience
Considering that I wanted to create a portable Windows 11 setup, I wouldn’t consider this experiment complete until I tested it on other PCs. So, I unplugged it from my test system and hooked it up to my primary workstation. And sure enough, my PC was able to boot into the Windows To Go setup, with all the apps, games, and files I’d added over the last couple of hours fully accessible. That said, I had to uninstall my old GTX 1080 drivers and arm the ones for RTX 3080 Ti to avoid visual bugs.
I also used my wacky Windows 11 setup at other PCs, including a dual Xeon server, and after following the same driver reinstallation sequence (this time involving Intel Arc drivers for the A750 GPU), my Windows To Go environment had no issues keeping up with something that’s not even meant to run this OS. That said, I did have issues getting it to run on my old Acer Predator Helios 300 (specifically, the G3-571-77QK model), as the laptop would absolutely fail to load into Windows 11. But otherwise, I’m pretty satisfied with this project, and although I’ll probably reuse my 512GB NVMe drive for some cluster projects in future, I plan to grab a spare SSD so I can have a portable Windows 11 instance for my Linux-only home lab nodes.