Hey guys,
Just curious if someone has done it before and thoughts behind it. I’ve ordered a 16 with GPU and was wondering what’s the best way of setting up the system when it arrives.
My primary OS is Arch Linux and I prefer not to split the disk for windows. And I happen to see some folks might be booting an OS through an expansion card ( I got the 1TB ).
My windows usage is primarily Steam and nothing else. The expansion card seems fast enough to run an OS, but it doesn’t look as fast as an SSD or NVMe, so games like starfield might suffer some performance is my current guess. If my guess is right, does it mean it’s better to have some external SSD to use as storage?
What do you guys think?
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You shouldn’t use an expansion card as an OS-drive. But you could split your SSD into multiple partitions and dual boot off of it. On the other hand you could use the second SSD slot as well.
My best advice would be to make a really small Windows partition (only the OS plus a bit of storage for personal stuff) and use an expansion card as your game storage. That way you could use it on a different machine as well.
Why not just have 2 ssds? You can always use the 2230 for windows and the 2280 for arch.
windows wont let you install on an external drive, but there are ways to force it. generally, i would not recommend it. you will have performance issues.
Wrong on that end. As someone who’s used Windows to go since the Windows 8 days I can confidently say a along as you use good USB drives such as the framework expansion card (which are small ssds with phison controllers) your experience will be good. Running Windows 10 ltsc on To go mode on my 250gb expansion card for over a year. 0 issues. People should do their research before spreading misinformation. Performance is sata ssd level. Not everyone needs their boot drives to be nvme.
I plan on installing Fedora on the 2230 drive while Windows will be on the 2280 drive.
While I use Linux as my primary OS, it’s mostly for low performance stuff (web browsing, maybe some emulation, etc).
Windows will be used for gaming so wanted a bigger and faster drive for it.
You can change it up if you want. But I wouldn’t recommend an external USB drive as an OS drive. Windows wouldn’t install on it anyways, but Linux can. For some use cases that may be good. If I wanted a Linux OS to boot from but also portable to use on a different PC if I needed to, that would be a great use case. Would probably encrypt it for good measure for this use case. It may be great if you want another main OS on the internal drive and an immutable or live USB living in your laptop that gives you the option to use on another PC for security reasons (only used for banking or for crypto transactions for example).
Wrong, I have windows 10 on my expansion card for over a year no issues. Need to use Rufus to install it onto the expansion card in to go mode. Just expect sata ssd performance. The framework cards are not mere cheap Flash drives as you typically find. These are very compact ssds with proper phison controllers
Yo! I did this with my FW13.
Windows is actually running on the SSD … and Ubuntu is running off the expansion card.
I wanted Linux to run completely independent of windows … so the way I solved the problem: After windows was installed on the SSD … I opened up the laptop - pulled the card out. Then, booted up the computer with Ubuntu on a flash card - and installed it to the expansion card. Then I obviously put the SSD back in.The computer automatically boots to windows … if I want Ubuntu - I press F12 at boot and it brings up the boot loader.
I have had literally zero problems using Ubuntu from the expansion card.
However, I do run most my files from the cloud.
I have not used it for gaming … I use Ubuntu for coding (web dev). Nevertheless, it’s been running with good read/write rates - and I can’t complain.I think it’s fun to be able to put different OS’s on expansion cards - and run whatever you want.
Thanks folks!
Seems like it’s impossible to run Windows on expansion card (shows my lack of knowledge of the OS), so it’s either Linux on the expansion card, or just install each OS on the separate SSDs.
I actually forgot there were 2 SSDs coming with it, so SSD option actually works.
It is definitely possible! I just installed Windows 11 To Go on my 1tb expansion card using rufus and it runs very nicely. The card gets only slightly warm when booted into windows but it should be fine i think. I have only had it installed for 2 days though but all works very well for now.
Totally agree. It’s just funny seeing soo many people say it’s impossible. It’s really stable in reality. Refreshing to see actually knowledgeable people here
It’s possible and really easy. Don’t listen to misinformation from inexperienced people. DM me if you need help
I have windows 10 installed on my expansion card, then I have all my steam games saved on the main SSD in an NTFS partition so games can be played from both windows and Linux, without having to be installed twice. It’s the perfect setup for my use case.
Since you’ll be working with a FW16 using the other M.2 would be a much better option, but it is totally possible to install/run windows on a USB drive