Windows bootable drive

DANPLAYSGAMES · February 2, 2017

I made a usb windows 10 bootable drive is there i way to transfer the files to my hard drive since right now i am only booti ng off the usb?

Electronics Wizardy · February 2, 2017

Huh?

Are you using windows 2 go or is this a installer?

What files?

brwainer · February 2, 2017

If you mean that you have made a bootable usb windows drive using the boot-from-vhd method, then you have to copy the VHD to the hard drive and follow the instructions to make that VHD bootable again (copying the boot files and such) on the hard drive as if it was a USB drive you were preparing. You would need to use a completely seperate windows system with both the usb drive and your target hard drive attached to it, since you can't copy the VHD while running from it.

AFAIK there isn't any clean way to convert from boot-from-VHD to a regular install, you can only transfer the VHD to another drive and set it up to boot again as I described above.

Edit: and in case anyone is wondering, boot-from-vhd is a supported way of booting windows, and I believe is how Windows2Go works. You can set it up yourself using some tools that aren't very well documented. I have two servers running HyperV Server 2016 that boot from USB - that is one of the few supported use cases.