Windows on a USB drive for testing.

[norbs]

Gents, I am trying to figure out the best way to make an image that I can copy onto a SSD USB drive to "test" stuff in a controlled environment.

Basically, I want to be able to tell me PC to boot off a USB drive and be able to blow that image away and put a clean one on at will.

Any suggestions as to the best way to do this? I am hoping I can make an image somewhere on my hard PC and just copy that to the SSD drive when I want a clean Windows environment to play around in.

[Cursed]

Without thinking too hard about it, how about have two hard-drives/SSD/whatever. Have normal/dirty OS installed on one and the clean installation on the other. You might then use the BIOS to choose your boot drive depending on which environment you want.

[norbs]

Without thinking too hard about it, how about have two hard-drives/SSD/whatever. Have normal/dirty OS installed on one and the clean installation on the other. You might then use the BIOS to choose your boot drive depending on which environment you want.

That sounds perfectly reasonable. I just need a way to blow away the dirty image and copy the clean one back on once I have tainted that copy of Windows.

[DarrenM]

Does your testing require you to be able to play games or not? If not then you could use virtualbox for your testing.

You could also make snapshots to rollback the image. Or after a clean install just make a copy of the virtual disk file. Then whenever you want to go back to it you can just copy it back over.

[norbs]

Does your testing require you to be able to play games or not? If not then you could use virtualbox for your testing.

You could also make snapshots to rollback the image. Or after a clean install just make a copy of the virtual disk file. Then whenever you want to go back to it you can just copy it back over.

No games. And excellent, didnt even think of that. Thanks Darren.

[wabbit]

Yeah a VM with a static sized partition would be really good.

[wobblysauce]

Then boom all gone when powered off.