Windows 10 to Launch on USB Sticks Too

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

The CURRENT system of getting people to try and restore etc from those horrible hidden partitions IMO is far more complicated - not only for a typical user but even quite experienced ones -- I've often had prooblems with those.

It's good that Windows 10 will at least be available on some sort of PHYSICAL MEDIA. I always HATED with a passion those "Hidden Partition" systems when computers stopped being sold without a proper PHYSICAL piece of Windows media.

The actual cost would have probably added about 0.30 EUR -- hardly significant for 300 - 2000 (or even more) EUR purchases.

Cheers
jimbo

I agree that its good to be available on physical media, much prefer these to the hidden partitions

My understanding on hidden partitions was

You could use them to do a windows reset which wipes everything and puts windows back as it came
and you create your own install media from them, so if your drive dies you restore windows from these discs

I ditched my factory installs long ago for my own custom clean install. They were for Windows 8.0 anyway and not much use.

As far as I know my factory recovery images are kept upto date (Dell Machine), when 8.1 came out it updated them from what I recall

I will get either a USB/DVD at some point for 10, or just get the ISO, then if I need a reinstall I will wipe out all the OEM stuff from the machine and do it clean

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

Not sure if this is actually a GOOD route -- USB sticks can get accidentally erased - and if they are Non erasable then you have storage / other problems - you don't want to encourage people to create hoards of external media storage devices.

Downloading an ISO and converting it for Boot on a USB stick via a program like RUFUS is IMO the best way.

I sometimes like to boot two or three different OS'es from the same USB stick --quite easy with a 16 / 32 / 64 GB stick.

Here's the link for RUFUS.

https://rufus.akeo.ie/


Cheers
jimbo

Seems to me that your thumb drive would be just as easy to accidentally erase as one provided by Microsoft? Assuming its not read only. Plus, all the work of creating it is already done for you. I don't get the "having hoards of external media storage" comment? What's the difference if you create the thumb drive or Microsoft does it for you? It's still only one more thumb drive for your collection. This one is likely going to have a Windows Logo on it too so it should be easy to keep track of what its for.

paulsalter said:

As far as I know my factory recovery images are kept upto date (Dell Machine), when 8.1 came out it updated them from what I recall

I will get either a USB/DVD at some point for 10, or just get the ISO, then if I need a reinstall I will wipe out all the OEM stuff from the machine and do it clean

I was going to nuke the factory install anyway, but had no choice when I swapped out my hard drive for an SSD. The drastic size difference meant cloning wouldn't work. I couldn't get it to work anyway, and wasn't long in giving up for a clean install. I wasn't an MVP then so finding an ISO was a pain. No such issues now though. I do all my installs from USB thumb drives. Its much faster than from optical media. It lets me easily customize my install media too. I have a custom dedicated thumb drive for each PC I own with its product code added along with custom OEM info for that PC. Plus, when the Windows 8.1 ISO is updated I just redo my thumb drives. No having to burn another DVD.

alphanumeric said:

I was going to nuke the factory install anyway, but had no choice when I swapped out my hard drive for an SSD. The drastic size difference meant cloning wouldn't work. I couldn't get it to work anyway, and wasn't long in giving up for a clean install. I wasn't an MVP then so finding an ISO was a pain. No such issues now though. I do all my installs from USB thumb drives. Its much faster than from optical media. It lets me easily customize my install media too. I have a custom dedicated thumb drive for each PC I own with its product code added along with custom OEM info for that PC. Plus, when the Windows 8.1 ISO is updated I just redo my thumb drives. No having to burn another DVD.

That's something I would like to do soon
Upgrade to an SSD, I have data on external drive and on onedrive so not much of an issue, but with 10 coming out in a month it would be an ideal time to do this

paulsalter said:

That's something I would like to do soon
Upgrade to an SSD, I have data on external drive and on onedrive so not much of an issue, but with 10 coming out in a month it would be an ideal time to do this

My laptop having a big screen, 17.3 inch, also gives me the bonus of dual drive bays. I have a 128 GB SSD for windows and a 256 GB SSD for my Data. Clean installs are a breeze as I only nuke the Windows drive and leave my data drive untouched. When I bought my SSD drives they weren't cheap. Buying the two I did was cheaper than one bigger 500 GB drive so that's the way I went.

Thanks for info, its something for me to ponder on during the summer

Need to upgrade the RAM also to 8GB, so an SSD at the same time makes sense

You know what would be better? SD flash cards. Then you could make them read only with the flick of a switch. And they would still be modifiable/updateable if you need to. If only my laptop would boot from them though. I have to put them in a USB adapter to boot from them.