Having succesfully booted Windows To Go on a USB 2.0 Hard Disk Drive (a standard 2.5" drive in a USB enclosure) I know that the USB 3.0 drives are not required. So how about using a USB 2.0 flash drive? First issue - I don't have any with a high enough capacity. Solution - use wimboot on my USB 2.0 Sandisk Cruzer Facet!
I decided to setup Windows To Go on the drive using a Windows 8.1 Update Operating System - using the excellent wimlib-imagex software. The reason for using this OS was the need to be able to run the BCD boot command after applying my wimboot .wim image to the USB drive - as Windows 8.1 Update includes the WoF driver this was not an issue.
The Windows To Go on the USB drive will also be a Windows 8.1 Update Operating System as this is well documented as being wimboot compatible.
Step 1 - A sysprepped image is required as a base for Windows To Go. I decided to use install.wim from Windows 8.1 Update installation media. I applied install.wim to a local directory and recaptured it as wimboot.wim using wimlib-imagex with the --wimboot switch.
Step 2 - Copied wimboot.wim (created in step 1) to my USB drive - the only partition on the drive was mounted as volume E:
Step 3 - ran "wimlib-imagex apply E:\wimboot.wim 1 E:\ --wimboot" to apply the contents of E:\wimboot.wim to volume E:\
Step 4 - Ran "bcdboot.exe E:\windows /s E:" to create boot files
Step 5 - Rebooted the computer and booted from my USB flash drive - completing setup.
Outcome - Setup took some time to complete and the Operating System was frustratingly slow with a long delay completing basic tasks (e.g. opening explorer, starting diskpart), however it did work!
![2015.08.16_2.jpg](http://mistyprojects.co.uk/screenshots/2015.08.16_2.jpg)
![2015.08.16_1.jpg](http://mistyprojects.co.uk/screenshots/2015.08.16_1.jpg)
Regards,
Misty