SOLVED Clone dual boot to external SSD

[jmccleary50]

You may recall that I posted several times about how I was able to create a dual boot system just by participating in this forum.
Well now that dual boot has become excruciatingly slow especially on the OS10 side where the delay from sign in screen to desktop is on the order of 4 minutes. So my latest idea is to try cloning to an external SSD drive as I have read that may speed things up.
Here's what I have read so far looking around the web. This laptop only has 3 US 2.0 ports no 3.0 ports available. A SATA cable in preferred over a USB cable but the SSD I've ordered is supplied with a USB cable. Cloning software from AOEMI or EaseUS. Any preference here? SSD partitions require "alignment". Huh? What is this? EaseUS has an advanced option optimize for SSD. I guess i'll take a chance on that.

Here's my disk management now. OS7 was decreased to make room for OS10.
It's very possible that this idea may far exceed my abilities but I'm going to try.
Wish me luck!

 

[Trouble]

Wish me luck!

Good luck.
I'm not absolutely sure, as I've never tried it personally but....
I've read various resources that indicate that Windows 10 does not support booting from what would ostensibly be a portable drive.
Barring "Windows To Go" of course.
So be sure to let us know how it turns out.

I can't see a USB device improving boot times over an internal drive.

 

[jmccleary50]

Windows 10 does not support booting from what would ostensibly be a portable drive.
Barring "Windows To Go" of course.

I think you are quite correct as I vaguely recall seeing messages to the effect that windows doesn't like to boot from removable drives.
But I'm still going to give it a try.

 

[BigFeet]

It can be done. I've just never done it. I've seen videos of people who've gotten Windows to boot from a flash drive. But the usb interface will be a bottleneck I'm sure.

 

[jmccleary50]

I'm a big believer in system images and that's where I've seen messages about removable devices. Plan B if cloning doesn't work is that I now have another drive for images.

 

[jmccleary50]

Well that was a great big wash. I had to go into bios and put USB first but it did boot. Not noticeably faster.
What was notable was EasUS partition master allowed setup of pending change and when prompted to execute popped up purchase dialog. Slick! There's a sucker born every minute. As I said I now have another drive for system images.

 

[Bighorn]

I had to go into bios and put USB first but it did boot. Not noticeably faster.

There is a noticeable difference in bootable media speeds, the slowest will be the ODD next the USB and fastest an internal drive. I see it when working with Linux Mint and using all 3 types of media.

 

[jmccleary50]

Important

Windows cannot boot from a USB connected drive. This is a restriction imposed by Windows. If you clone your system disk to a USB connected external drive then, to boot your clone, the physical disk must be removed from the USB caddy and attached to your Motherboard SATA port.
This was copied from a tutorial posted by Clintlgm on this forum. See! I told ya this forum has the answers.

 

[TechnoMax]

"Windows cannot boot from a USB connected drive. " This is a judgement from the past. For 20 years or so I tried to get around this restriction imposed by Microsoft and it never worked.
But to my astonishment this is not true anymore: Several programms offer a system clone feature. I started with WinToUSB from Hasleo. You have to prepare the target device with two partions, one small 100MB in FAT32 and one big for Windows 10 in NTFS. Up to 1803 it worked even in the free edition. When the Windows to be clones is 1809 already one has to buy the Pro version.
EaseUS Todo Backup Home (not the free version) can do it too. But it is picky reagarding the partion scheme on the target drive. It has to be cleaned from each and every partition becouse the smalles "other" partition prevents the cloning. I never could make an USB stick work and changed to SSDs for this purpose.
I have successfully cloned several PCs this way to a cheap Kingston 240GB SSD in an UGREEN USB 3.0 enclosure. I only failed with the notebook of my wife ...