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Windows to go workspace is obsolete since like Windows 10 1907, thought you can still enable “all driver loaded boot” by changing a single registry key in regedit.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.
So… the machine regardless of operating system does not power off properly when the expansion card is connected. So restart/shutting down from Fedora (my internal SSD OS) has the same effect. Secondly, power continues to drain in this mode – furthermore, I’ve observed that when the expansion card is connected and even when operating in Fedora, suspend now does the same power draw, so I’ll charge to 100%, put it in my bag, and when I take it out of my bag a while later it will now be 0% battery critically low – I’ve never had this problem before (so it isn’t related to my HDMI adaptor, as that and all else remained consistent pre-and-post expansion card experiments).
This is with Framework 13" AMD 7040 bios 3.20.
Port are, all latest gen:
- left monitor side - expansion card
- left touchpad side - usb-a - this is new with the expansion card, but I’ve tried with and without
- right monitor side - hdmi - consistent pre-and-post expansion
- right touchpad side - usb-c going to a pluggable 7-in-1 adapter, with hdmi, usb-a mouse, ethernet, and power connected - consistent pre-and-post expansion
So it seems they are somewhat half-baked, and should be disconnected when not in active use, which kind of defeats the purpose of the expansion card form factor as compared to a dongle SSD which makes the limitation obvious.
I’ll continue to debug further. Things I need to try:
- Perhaps Fedora is mounting the windows partition on the expansion drive, so perhaps this is what is causing the power draw when Fedora suspend – and this does nothing to fix the poweroff issue
- Perhaps I need to configure Windows has to migrate from standby to hibernate when the lid closes - but that still depends on the poweroff issue to be fixed
Spent some time doing more testing. Strangely Fedora seems okay now, but this is after a large fedora system update, which did have trouble before but no trouble after. So who knows there.
For windows, the results are interesting.
If the expansion card is plugged into either of the monitor-side ports then it fails to poweroff. If the expansion card is plugged into either of the trackpad-side ports, then it powers off fine. Tried the two windows efi options, for each combination, same result.
This then led me to think okay maybe the expansion card is a usb-a interface that the monitor-side ports aren’t meant to support, and that maybe the poweroff issue is what is meant by no support. But then I plugged in the usb-a card into both the monitor-side ports, one other the other, with and without a mouse, and it the usb-a device a mouse works fine and it powers off fine… so then I was like okay, maybe usb-a mice work in the no usb-a port but perhaps not dongles, so I tried with my pluggable 7-in-1 dongle in the monitor-side right port, with hdmi, ethernet, usb-a mouse, and power connected and it worked fine…
So the expansion cards need to be plugged into the trackpad side ports to poweroff correctly. And I have zero comprehension of what no-usb-a ports means anymore re the amd 7040 series, as they seem to support usb-a just fine…
I’m now testing the power drain while standby issues, but that will take some days.
Framework Support got back:
Hi Benjamin,
Thank you for your reply.
Upon checking further internally, we had to inform you that, unfortunately, Windows does not support installation on a Storage Expansion Card. This is because the Storage Expansion Card is a USB device. This is an internal protocol within Windows.
We hope this helps.
If you have other concerns, please do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you for trusting Framework, and have a great day!
Regards,
Framework Support
So, no support if you are using Windows / Windows to Go on the drive. That said, this doesn’t address the other issues:
- power-drain on standby when connected (still debugging)
- only powering-off correctly when connected via the touchpad-side ports
- what no-usb-A means on AMD 7040 when usb-a seems to work fine on the no usb-a ports
