As the continuation of What is the longevity of Storage (2nd Gen) Expansion Card - 250GB
I decided to get the Storage Expansion Card to run Windows 11 on it, keeping the internal SSD for Fedora. However, after flashing a usb drive with Windows 11 installer using Rufus on another Windows machine, and plugging that bootable windows 11 installer and the storage expansion card into the framework, Windows 11 actually refuses to install to the expansion card.
At first it complained as the expansion card was MBR, so I booted back into fedora to wipe it as gpt/guid, but then windows now complains that installing to usb is simply impossible.
Which violates the marketing by framework that the expansion cards can be used for windows 11 installs, and that we should contact support otherwise.
Anyone got tips? Do I need to use Rufus to enable the disable hardware requirements option?
I think u will need Window to go. Windows usually won’t let you install on external storage. Let me know how’s ur experience because I’ll need to do this soon!
Tried Windows To Go option in Rufus, and after some booting anticipation it just goes to a black screen where everything is unresponsive
have you seen this thread Guide: How to install Windows 10 onto storage expansion card - #46 by PlanetaryTyler. I have not tried to install windows by myself, but some users reports success
I’ve held the power button and disabled fast/quick boot. It then seems to proceed to the next step of the install process, then goes a step, hangs at black screen, then I hold power button, it goes to next step, and so on. Seems like an issue with Rufus Windows To Go and the reboot procedure.
I’ll keep experimenting. Right now regretfully I connected it to the internet (perhaps there is a hidden way to bypass it - beyond the rufus option that I didn’t enable) so it after or so the second or third reboot intervention, it is now downloading a bunch of updates and will take a while.
Thanks everyone for the suggestions.
try disconnecting the HDMI expansion card.
Windows refusing to install onto external SSD is unironically sort of “expected behavior”. You can however install Linux onto external media. Linux does not care.
Windows to go workspace is obsolete since like Windows 10 1907, thought you can still enable “all driver loaded boot” by changing a single registry key in regedit. Trying to boot a normal windows install will result in bluescreen, as the USB driver is not loaded during the bootloading procedure.
So Windows to Go worked via rufus, with the caveat that it never reboots nor even shuts down without manually holding the power button to turn it off, even with framework drivers installed:
The update also seemed to undo the rufus privacy customisation, as I was still prompted for the microsoft spamware. So I guess the rufus customisations depend on having offline install enabled.
So the black screens during windows to go was actually just a pending restart or pending shutdown that requires manual intervention for some reason.
In the end I unplugged the hdmi adapter but it made no impact to windows to go; I’ll see now if it has any impact on the windows installer.
