Can a win10 system booted from a USB drive read the disk of the pc its connected to?

[Blakflag3]

I want to dual boot two versions of win10 but i only have one partition on my SSD and don't want to format it to create another partition to dual boot on, so i had the ingenious idea of installing windows on a 32gb flashdrive i have laying around and using it as my secondary system. So i wanted to ask if i do that will the system on the flashdrive be able to read the contents of the laptop's SSD or not? And are there any other solutions to my problem that don't involve deleting anything off of my SSD or buying more internal storage?

 

Appreciate all the help you can offer!

[Analog]

3 minutes ago, Blakflag3 said:

I want to dual boot two versions of win10 but i only have one partition on my SSD and don't want to format it to create another partition to dual boot on, so i had the ingenious idea of installing windows on a 32gb flashdrive i have laying around and using it as my secondary system. So i wanted to ask if i do that will the system on the flashdrive be able to read the contents of the laptop's SSD or not? And are there any other solutions to my problem that don't involve deleting anything off of my SSD or buying more internal storage?

 

Appreciate all the help you can offer!

 

Running Windows of a flash drive will be slow, but, yes it can be done. I have done it several times to troubleshoot a failing primary drive. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Yea it can read anouther windows install disk by deafault. Best way to prevent this is to enable bitlocker or other encryption. 

[ProjectBox153]

You can run Windows from a flash drive, but if you want to actually use it you're in for a very rough time. It will be very slow, and you're likely to kill your flash drive. But yes, it will be able to see the internal drive. 

[Kilrah]

Yes you have access to any drive in the system as normal. If the data you want to access is in your user profile you'll need to sort out permissions though.

 

But you don't need to format if you want to shringk the main partition and make a 2nd one either.

[Blakflag3]

2 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

Yes you have access to any drive in the system as normal. If the data you want to access is in your user profile you'll need to sort out permissions though.

 

But you don't need to format if you want to shringk the main partition and make a 2nd one either.

How can i divide the main partition without having to format it? If that is possible it will solve my issue completely.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Blakflag3 said:

How can i divide the main partition without having to format it? If that is possible it will solve my issue completely.

You can dual boot using vhds, no need to use partitions.

[Kilrah]

4 minutes ago, Blakflag3 said:

How can i divide the main partition without having to format it? If that is possible it will solve my issue completely.

In disk manager you have a "reduce volume" option when you right click on a parition.

 

Another option is something like https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

[Blakflag3]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can dual boot using vhds, no need to use partitions.

Oh cool i didn't know that was a thing

Thanks!

[Blakflag3]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

In disk manager you have a "reduce volume" option when you right click on a parition.

 

Another option is something like https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

Oh awesome I'll try it out. thanks!

[pryinglynx_nerve]

On 1/18/2021 at 11:52 AM, Analog said:

 

Running Windows of a flash drive will be slow, but, yes it can be done. I have done it several times to troubleshoot a failing primary drive. 

Depends on the USB, really. $5 usb3.0 16gb probably wont be blazing fast, but faster drives like 64/128gb Sandisk Extreme Pros run WinPE fine off usbs and are definitely not slow lol.