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Windows 11 Installation on an External SSD

byalexandr
By byalexandr
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Go to solution Solved by byalexandr,

Back with an update, and some notes for anyone doing the same.

 

I actually ended up installing Windows 10, as I had a USB recovery drive I had made a long time ago laying around (on an irrelevant note it also has Ubuntu 20.04 LTS by switching the folder directories around before booting from it).

 

So that solved my installation media problem, and I happen to like Windows 10 anyways. Now, I did run into an issue when I went to install from the installation media to the external SSD (I bought a Samsung T7 1TB). During the installation process, I was hit with two errors: one being that the drive was an MBR partition and Windows 10 64-bit can only be installed on a GPT partition. The second error being that "Windows cannot be installed on a USB drive".

 

To work around the partition type issue, I went in the recovery portion of the installation media, opened cmd and used diskpart to format the drive and convert it to GPT. After that, I went back into the installation process but I was still left with the second error message.

 

That's when I found this helpful guide: https://decryptingtechnology.blogspot.com/2015/09/install-windows-10-on-usb-external-hard.html (linked from another LTT forum post)

 

I followed the command prompt instructions, and was able to successfully install and boot Windows 10 on the external SSD. There are a couple notes though:

 

- Depending on the build of Windows 10, install.wim may not exist and install.esd may instead be in the C:\sources\ folder (you can check by typing dir C:\sources\ to see the folder contents in command prompt). For my particular build, only install.esd was in the folder. After doing some reading, ESD is just a compressed version of WIM. There was some mention in several different forum threads on converting from one to the other for the installation to work, but I just changed the paths in the copy command and dism /ApplyImage command to use the ESD file instead, and it applied the image to the partition with no issue.

 

- The recovery image partition size of 350 (assigned letter T: in the guide) is too small to copy the winre.wim file from the installation media. After doing some reading, at least 650 is recommended, and I set the partition size to 700 just to be sure there was enough space, as going back into diskpart and attempting to extend the partition size before continuing the manual installation did not work, since it was the first partition created on the drive (I ended up having to start from step one and reformatting the drive, this time using an ample partition size for the recovery image).

 

- In the second to last command, R:\RecoverImage should be R:\RecoveryImage (typo). If you type exactly what is in the guide, reagentc.exe will produce an error that the path does not exist.

 

Other than that, exiting the command prompt, turning off the laptop, unplugging the installation media and then booting from the external SSD brought me to Windows setup screen as expected. Everything works well and the data transfer speed is pretty fast, even though I have the drive plugged in to the USB 3.0 port on the laptop (instead of one of the two Thunderbolt ports with much faster transfer speeds).

 

 

Posted

Hey all,

 

I've been debating building another desktop for my own personal use, as my work laptop is, well, a work laptop that I cannot install my own programs, games, etc. on. However, my work laptop is actually pretty well spec'd (2021 Dell XPS 15, 11th gen i7, 32GB DDR4, RTX 3050) as I use it for Adobe CC and other work related software. It also has Thunderbolt USB-C, so I can get some pretty fast transfer speeds from an external drive.

 

I am about to go buy a 1 or 2TB external SSD, but I am wondering the limitations of installing Windows 11 on an external drive. Not so much about transfer speeds, but more on what all is involved with installing it on the drive. Since I cannot install any programs, I would have to format a separate USB drive and unpack a Windows ISO on it, and then use that as installation media to install Windows on the external SSD. So I have a few questions, before I go spending $100 or so:

 

- Will I be able to create installation media strictly from an ISO file (no program like Rufus, WinToUSB, etc.), and use that second USB drive to install a fresh copy of Windows on the desired external SSD?

- Are there any limitations with running Windows 11 on an external SSD? My laptop already runs Windows 11, but as far as picking which drive to boot from, Secure Boot, etc.

 

My laptop BIOS is not locked in any way, only the Windows installation currently on the machine. So I can change boot options or any other BIOS settings.

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Back with an update, and some notes for anyone doing the same.

 

I actually ended up installing Windows 10, as I had a USB recovery drive I had made a long time ago laying around (on an irrelevant note it also has Ubuntu 20.04 LTS by switching the folder directories around before booting from it).

 

So that solved my installation media problem, and I happen to like Windows 10 anyways. Now, I did run into an issue when I went to install from the installation media to the external SSD (I bought a Samsung T7 1TB). During the installation process, I was hit with two errors: one being that the drive was an MBR partition and Windows 10 64-bit can only be installed on a GPT partition. The second error being that "Windows cannot be installed on a USB drive".

 

To work around the partition type issue, I went in the recovery portion of the installation media, opened cmd and used diskpart to format the drive and convert it to GPT. After that, I went back into the installation process but I was still left with the second error message.

 

That's when I found this helpful guide: https://decryptingtechnology.blogspot.com/2015/09/install-windows-10-on-usb-external-hard.html (linked from another LTT forum post)

 

I followed the command prompt instructions, and was able to successfully install and boot Windows 10 on the external SSD. There are a couple notes though:

 

- Depending on the build of Windows 10, install.wim may not exist and install.esd may instead be in the C:\sources\ folder (you can check by typing dir C:\sources\ to see the folder contents in command prompt). For my particular build, only install.esd was in the folder. After doing some reading, ESD is just a compressed version of WIM. There was some mention in several different forum threads on converting from one to the other for the installation to work, but I just changed the paths in the copy command and dism /ApplyImage command to use the ESD file instead, and it applied the image to the partition with no issue.

 

- The recovery image partition size of 350 (assigned letter T: in the guide) is too small to copy the winre.wim file from the installation media. After doing some reading, at least 650 is recommended, and I set the partition size to 700 just to be sure there was enough space, as going back into diskpart and attempting to extend the partition size before continuing the manual installation did not work, since it was the first partition created on the drive (I ended up having to start from step one and reformatting the drive, this time using an ample partition size for the recovery image).

 

- In the second to last command, R:\RecoverImage should be R:\RecoveryImage (typo). If you type exactly what is in the guide, reagentc.exe will produce an error that the path does not exist.

 

Other than that, exiting the command prompt, turning off the laptop, unplugging the installation media and then booting from the external SSD brought me to Windows setup screen as expected. Everything works well and the data transfer speed is pretty fast, even though I have the drive plugged in to the USB 3.0 port on the laptop (instead of one of the two Thunderbolt ports with much faster transfer speeds).

 

 

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