How to clone Windows to USB or Thunderbolt drive as a Windows To Go Workspace?

As a professional Windows To Go Creator, Hasleo WinToUSB is the world's first software that can help us clone the existing Windows OS installation (Windows 7 or later) to a USB or Thunderbolt drive as portable Windows, this feature allows you to quickly migrate your work environment to a USB drive, which reduces the time consumption of freshly installing Windows and application software. This guide will help you explain how it works, please read this guide carefully before performing the clone operation.

Tutorial to clone Windows to USB or Thunderbolt drive as portable Windows with Hasleo WinToUSB.

Step 1. Connect the USB or Thunderbolt drive to the computer, download, install and run WinToUSB and then click the "Windows To Go USB".

Step 2. Click "Select installation source" and then select "Current Windows OS" from the list that pops up.

Step 3. Click "Select destination drive" and select the destination drive from the pop-up drive list. If the drive is not correctly recognized by Hasleo WinToUSB, you can click the button for the program to recognize the drive.

Step 4. Choose the partition scheme, installation mode, and set other information according to your needs. Please note that here you will need to click on the button to see more settings.

* Partition scheme:

1. MBR for BIOS: This option creates a Windows To Go USB that can only be booted on BIOS computers.
2. GPT for UEFI: This option creates a Windows To Go USB that can only be booted on UEFI computers.
3. MBR for BIOS and UEFI: This option creates a Windows To Go USB that can be booted on both BIOS and UEFI computers.
4. Keep the existing partition scheme: This option allows you to manually prepare the partitions on the drive, and here is the user guide on how to manually prepare partitions for Windows To Go. And please note that the "Keep the existing partition scheme" option is only available for Windows 10 1709 and later Windows OSs when using a USB flash drive to create Windows To Go.

* Installation mode:

1. The Legacy mode is the best choice if you are using an external drive to create Windows To Go, it has the best performance.
2. The VHD/VHDX mode is the best choice if you are using a USB flash drive to create Windows To Go, because from our tests and user feedback, the VHD/VHDX mode has best compatibility when using a USB flash drive to create Windows To Go. The VHDX is a new VHD format for Windows 8 or later Windows OS, so if you want to create a Windows 11/10/8 To Go USB flash drive, we recommend using VHDX.

* Enable BitLocker:

1. Check the "Enable BitLocker" checkbox to encrypt the Windows To Go drive with BitLocker, you need to enter the password and select the encryption mode and encryption strength you need.
2. If "Enable BitLocker" checkbox is checked, the first startup time of Windows will become longer because it will take some time to complete the encryption operation, so please be patient.

* Additional drivers:

1. The "Additional drivers" option allows us to inject additional drivers into Windows when creating Windows To Go, which is particularly important when we have to rely on hardware drivers to complete the Windows installation, such as creating Windows To Go for Mac computers.
2. The directory of the additional drivers you specify should only contain drivers that need to be injected into Windows. If this directory contains too many useless files, the process of injecting drivers will become very slow.
3. The "Additional drivers" option is not available when the version number of the Windows to be installed is greater than the version number of the currently running Windows operating system.

* Offline internal disks when booting into Windows To Go: All internal disks will be offline by default after booting into Windows To Go with this option checked, and you will need to manually bring the internal disks online to access them.

* Sector by sector clone: This option enables you to clone all sectors from source boot partition to destination boot partition, so the destination boot partition must be greater than or equal to the source boot partition.

Step 5. After choosing the partition scheme, you can click the button to bring up the Disk Layout window. Here you can adjust the size and location of the partitions as well as set volume labels and other information as needed, and then click "OK" to save the changes.

Step 6. Click "Proceed" when you have completed all the settings, a pop-up will appear asking you if you want to format it to continue, click "Yes" if you are sure.

Step 7. After clicking "Yes", WinToUSB begins cloning Windows to the destination drive.

* Tips: Please note that in some cases WinToUSB may need to create a WinPE and then reboot into the WinPE environment to complete the Windows cloning operation.

Step 8. It takes some time to clone. After the clone is successfully completed, restart the computer and change BIOS to boot from your USB or Thunderbolt drive.

Conclusion

Follow these simple steps, you can clone/migrate Windows OS to USB or Thunderbolt drive with WinToUSB easily, and then boot Windows from the drive.

As a professional portable Windows creation tool, you can also use Hasleo WinToUSB to install Windows from a Windows installation ISO, WIM to a USB drive, or even from a Windows system backup image generated by Hasleo Backup Suite to a USB drive as portable Windows.