Interesting PORTABLE VM W7 system using HYPER-V and W8 2 GO

Hi there
After a bit of messing about I've got what I think is an ULTIMATE portable bootable Windows running system.

1) use a 2 inch laptop drive (either with USB==>SATA cable or one of those enclosures you can buy -insert the disk in the box and just use a standard mini usb cable. If you can afford it an SSD would be even better.

2) download W8 CP (x-64 or 32 - I chose the x-64 version - but if you are going perhaps to try to use this on an older machine then you might consider the 32 bit version. I can't see myself dealing with those really old machines as the USB 1 version would be too slow in any case).

3) follow EXACTLY the Win2Go procedure as for a USB but use your HDD. At this stage the created partition will use the WHOLE drive. Note that when creating the BOOT files you need to have the W8 iso available for creating the BOOT files on the external HDD when running the BCDBOOT.EXE command. You can't use the one from W7 system. Also ensure that the partition is set ACTIVE !!!.

4) After install boot the system (remember to set boot from USB device in the bios of the HOST machine).

5) the system will do some device / registry stuff and then finally boot up FROM THE EXTERNAL HDD DRIVE and work exactly as a full running WINDOWS system with a proper C Drive etc.
Re-partition the drive now with Partition wizard etc. You can store the VM in this second partition.

6) Go to control panel ==> windows programs and features - tick the HYPER-V box.
(Navigating W8 isn't the same as W7 so look on W8 forums for help there).

7) after system is ready and booted up install your W7 Guest system - plenty of links on installing a W7 guest on Hyper-V in the W8 Forums. DWARF has an excellent tutorial in the tutorial section.

8) Power the VM on -- and you are good to go !!.

The only current limitation is that you can't get Native sound on the VM but I doubt if that should be a serious issue - and if you RDP to the VM rather than logon from the HOST machine then it does apparently work too.

Speed is actually fine -- I was quite surprised.

Be interesting to try this with a combination of USB3 and SSD also.

Sure makes maintenance etc much easier -- I won't need all those "recovery disks" / BartPE stuff -- although they were fine for their time.

Note that W8 also has a very nice built in feature - ISO's can be mounted as Virtual drives - no more messing about with "Virtual Drive" software. W7 should back port this into it.


Cheers
jimbo