[GTALUG] moving Win8.1 with Bing out of the way

Lennart Sorensen lsorense at csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Sun Apr 12 16:49:40 UTC 2015


On Sun, Apr 12, 2015 at 12:46:37AM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> I bought a cute little box (a weakness of mine): an HP Stream Mini.
> It comes with Win8.1 with Bing x64 on its "HDD", a 32G M.2 SSD.  Note
> that it is x64: not one of these Atoms with a crippled 32-bit UEFI.
> 
> Fedora 21 runs fine off a live USB stick.
> 
> The SSD is a fine size for Linux, but not a fine size for Win8.1 + Linux.  
> So I intend to evict Windows from the SSD.  But I feel that I need to keep 
> Win8.1 bootable
> - I paid for it (a lame reason)
> - I will likely need Win8.1 to do firmware updates
> - it might be worth playing with for some purposes
> 
> I'd like to migrate Win8.1 to a USB3 device.  I just bought a 64G usb 
> stick which might be perfect ($19.99 at NCIX this weekend).  Or more 
> likely, a 2.5" external HDD.
> 
> Does anyone know how to migrate Windows?

To another SATA disk is no big deal.  To USB is a totally different story.
Not even sure if you can.  A quick search confirms that installing
TO usb/firewire is NOT supported (at least in Windows 7).
There are ways around it, but don't expect it to always work.  See
http://www.intowindows.com/how-to-install-windows-7-to-usb-external-hard-drive-must-read/
for example.

> Googling finds lots of moderately crappy postings about how to move
> Windows to an SSD but I cannot tell if they assume that some vital
> essence is left on the original drive.  (I actually wish to move the
> opposite way; that ought not to be a problem.)

Moving to an SSD is just another SATA drive.  Nothing complex about that.
It is still just an internal SATA drive.

> I've found Windows quite fragile, possibly due to piracy prevention
> things.  It also seems to want to own booting and on UEFI / Secure
> Boot systems this gets downright magical (i.e.  I don't understand it)
> 
> All seem to take proprietary non-Microsoft software -- one fears a
> bait-and-switch.  (I bet some of the bootable ones are based on
> Linux.)
> 
> I can experiment, but I thought I'd ask here first.

I think what you want to do simply isn't supported in windows.  I think
you are out of luck.

-- 
Len Sorensen


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