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Seeing nice profits on Nicehash with the 1060's. Currently mining MNX on Linux, bootable from a USB.

I can not seem to get Windows to run from my USB. Any suggestions? I will tip $

Buy a hard drive.

any cheaper option? Not trying to spend 50$ per hard drive for each of my rigs.

http://theoven.org/index.php?topic=1336.0

I went to that site, followed the directions using that utility and was able to create a bootable windows 10 environment on USB, which I used to test the performance/profitability of CPU mining on a couple older PCs I had around.  I was impressed with the bootable windows environment, seems like a nice thing to have in the "tool box" so-to-speak.

Well it isn't $50, but it is between $30 and $35...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-SSD-335-Series-2-5-SATA-80GB-Solid-State/263383210537?epid=109525944&hash=item3d52dcda29:g:A~4AAOSw9idaLtC3

Intel SSD 80 gigs used.

I use these on my rigs and they are pretty fantastic for the size and speed at a low price.

I use 10 or 15 year old harddrive (ex OLD PORN Collection) for mining, using clone from master ssd and start mining.

There's a Western Digital 320GB SATA HDD on Amazon for $20 (US). I wouldn't waste money on a SSD for a mining machine (most assume SSDs draw less power, but that may not be the case), and most USB flash drives are "built to a price" and might not survive being powered on all the time.

https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/

its painfully slow but works

Create a bootable live Windows USB Stick:

https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/ (https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/)

Works pretty well, no need for HDD.

Cheers,
Andy

I should mention I want to RUN windows. When I load the installer, it boots but does not let me install upon that usb.
tried buying an external hard drive with USB input and it still will not let me. it shows up but gives me some sort of error.


going to return the external hard drive and buy an SSD card and buy the connector.

This is more of a roundabout way of doing it, but I would suggest that you obtain ONE internal hard drive, preferably of a lower capacity than your USB drives, install it in one rig, install Windows* to that drive, then use Clonezilla or a similar utility to clone the contents to a USB drive.


Off the top of my head, I'm not sure if you'd have to install the unactivated trial version of Windows for each system individually, or if you could, perhaps, just boot up Clonezilla once on one machine and make multiple clones for each machine. (If you recall the OEM vs. retail situation, the ability to simply run Windows off of a hard drive from a different machine, wherein the OS was originally installed, isn't guaranteed, even if the systems are made of similar components.)

ROFL, if you were resourceful you would know where to find 80gb used ssd's for pretty cheap
shit I'm surprised no one has done a PXE boot with Linux and mining rigs. no hard drive would be needed as it all loads from a central server

no i am not resourceful.

bought an internal ssd + sata to USB for 80$ with one day shipping. hope this works out, but would still like a easier way to move my 20 rigs over to windows.

I have a method that I use that's MAD easy, windows os is already installed to an image, which I then use to copy onto a hard drive, its got all the miner programs and gpu driver installation files already on the hard drive, I just have to take 5 mins to do the initial setup of windows and install some drivers and that's it, easy peasy

if u could help me with that id be very appreciated.
i have sent you a message on discord.

I was reading a bit about this today and the general consensus seemed to be that it's possible but more hassle than what it's worth. I think a cheap ssd is the better option.

Windows won't install to an external source (hdd or flash drive) unless you trick it into thinking that your external source is in fact an internal drive. There is software to do this - check out this article:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3185777/windows/how-to-install-windows-on-an-external-drive.html

clearly you don't know what you are saying, an ssd does draw less power than a traditional hard drive and the fact you can sit there and say that goes to show that you don't know squat, traditional hdd cant get close to using just 5watts like an ssd can, but hey go on ahead passing around false information

first of all a usb stick wont last very long and you will have to replace it after a number of months, they were not designed to be used like this and people like you need to realize this, its a poor choice. as youll notice most of the Linux say to put it on an ssd now days NOT a pen drive, ethos changed that and so did many other mining OS's pen drives are a crap choice

If you read the article I linked you will notice that it's referring primarily to a USB external hard drive, not a flash drive..... perhaps you meant to quote the OP instead?

For the record all of our computers, business or personal are using internal SSD/HDD anyways.

Aren't you a little ray of sunshine!  And a wrong one, or, at least, wrong-headed to boot.

See, this is a case where the devil is in the details. The average SSD does, indeed, draw less power than the average HDD, but it also tends to draw that power all the time, regardless of what it is doing, whereas power consumption in a HDD very much depends on what it is doing, and it goes to damn near zero if the O/S spins it down when it hasn't been called on for several minutes. But setting that aside, let's take your claims at face value - an SSD draws 5W and this is "less than half" of an HDD. Okay, make the HDD 15W, so 10W of difference. Over the course of an hour that is 10 more Watt-hours of energy, and at a typical cost of $0.12 / 1000 Watt-hours that comes out to a little over a tenth of a cent per hour. If the SSD costs a mere $10 more than the HDD it will still take nearly a year of energy savings to pay the difference.

But you go on ahead and take your victory lap.

You have 2 options (probably more, but these 2 will be your best bet)

1.  If you can acquire a windows 10 Enterprise or Education edition, it comes with a built in utility called "Windows to Go" which will create a portable windows environment on a USB drive.  I'm sure you can find a torrent with one of these versions.  Here are the instructions for installing it:  http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/windows-to-go-in-windows-10,2-1089.html

2.  Use the Win To USB utility that others have mentioned here.  This will also do exactly what you are trying to accomplish:  https://www.easyuefi.com/wintousb/index.html


When researching this, don't get confused with the utlilities that will put the windows cd onto a usb drive and make it bootable.  There are a few popular ones out there, but they are designed to allow you to install windows when you don't have a cd-rom.