Linux users are no doubt familiar with the ability to boot an entire Linux distro off a flash drive and use it directly that way, not having to install it on the hard drive of the computer. This is mostly useful for testing out a new distro before installing it, but it can also be a way to make any computer usable with an experience you enjoy. If you want to use a public PC but you can't install your favorite browser on it, a live USB drive can help you get the experience you want.

Windows used to let you do something similar using a feature called Windows To Go, but in 2020, Microsoft discontinued it, so you can no longer run a full Windows installation off a USB drive. Well, officially, that is. Thanks to the well-known Rufus utility, you can still create a faux Windows To Go installation. I recently decided to give this a shot, and it frankly worked out a bit better than I expected. Here's how you can do it, too.

Creating a portable Windows installation

A usable Windows PC anywhere you go

If you want to create your own Windows To Go installation, it's a very simple process. All you need to do is download an official Windows 11 ISO instead of using Microsoft's Media Creation Tool to create a flash drive directly. With the ISO file, you can use Rufus to prepare a flash drive instead.

Once you're in Rufus, simply select the ISO file and the flash drive you want to use as your Windows installation. Then, under Image option, change the dropdown menu from Standard Windows Installation to Windows To Go. You can then click START. A menu will appear with a few options, including one that prevents access to the internal drives on a computer when using the portable Windows installation, which is probably ideal so you don't accidentally leave your own data on the computer for someone else to access.

Otherwise, you can proceed and simply wait for the process to finish. After that, you can boot from your USB drive as you would with any other operating system.

You'll want a fast (and large) drive

It's not the same as an installation drive

Once I had followed the steps above, I booted up my laptop, choosing the USB drive as a boot device. To my dismay, the first attempt resulted in a freeze during bootup. A second attempt seemed to work better, but I was stuck in a seemingly infinite loading cycle, so the experience wasn't sustainable. This was on a fairly basic 16GB drive (and an old one at that), which is likely not enough to house Windows 11 once everything is fully set up, so I should have seen that coming from a mile away.

So I switched over to my portable 128GB SSD, and that went a lot better. Flashing the image with Rufus was a lot faster, and after booting up from it, I managed to get through the "Getting ready" screen. Sadly, instead of the Windows 11 OOBE, I was greeted by a completely black screen, but after a restart, I was finally able to set up my portable Windows installation. Since I was using Rufus, I also removed the requirement for a Microsoft account, but otherwise, the setup process was fairly normal. Except I was also missing a few drivers for the laptop I was testing, such as for the touchpad and Wi-Fi, which meant I had to set things up using the keyboard and an Ethernet connection.

In fact, if your goal is to use this on different computers, you might want to keep some drivers handy, as you never really know what kind of system you might need to use with it. Swapping between my laptop and desktop, I had to get different drivers for graphics and internet, despite both having relatively modern Intel processors. Your USB drive will be the storage for your files on the Windows installation, so you can download the files on one PC to install it on another later.

The larger your drive, the more wiggle room you'll have. After just setting up with some drivers and my browser of choice, the portable SSD showed 48GB were used, so it's very likely you'll need at least a 64GB USB drive to have a usable Windows device. Of course, that matches the minimum requirement for Windows 11, so it's probably not very surprising.

It's not a perfect solution

You may sometimes have problems

Even with everything set up correctly, you can't guarantee that this Windows To Go installation will work perfectly on every computer. I mostly tested on two devices, my Huawei MateBook X Pro from 2022 (with 12th-gen Intel processors), and the more recent Geekom IT15 (with Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processors). I tested a third device, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED, but this simply wouldn't recognize the flash drive when I tried booting from it using the Windows recovery environment. I might have been able to do it by changing the boot order in the UEFI settings, but that's the kind of hassle you might not want.

Even on the computers where it worked more seamlessly, I sometimes had issues where the computers would fail to boot initially for no apparent reason, requiring a second reboot to be able to use the computers properly. Sometimes my laptop would boot into a black screen after installing drivers or coming off of my desktop, which again required me to shut down the PC and try again. None of it caused permanent damage, but it was a little frustrating.

It may still be worth it

A portable workspace

Once you get past the initial boot issues and potential missing drivers, though, using the computer off of your flash drive feels fine. With my portable SSD, which supports up to 10Gbps bandwidth via the USB 3.2 Gen 2 connection, using Windows 11 feels about as smooth as you could expect it to be. Everything works pretty flawlessly, and I've even written part of this article on this portable Windows install.

I only installed Vivaldi for this short experiment, but any program you install, as long as it fits on your portable drive, will go with you wherever you go, with all your settings and everything. As I mentioned at the top, you may sometimes need to use a public PC, but libraries and other open spaces like that usually have restrictions so you can't install your own apps, and they might even have old versions of Windows with fewer features.

Having an entire setup on a disk is incredibly useful so you can have the exact experience you want every time (barring any performance differences or incompatible drivers). It may have some frustrations when you use a new PC for the first time, but once you know how to boot into your flash drive and have all the drivers, it's generally smooth sailing.

It is worth noting that, since this isn't an officially supported Microsoft solution, there's always a chance something will break in the future with some updates, but for the time being, it works fine. I recommend giving it a go if a portable Windows setup is something you've been wanting.