The World According to Mitch

There is probably no good reason why I have four (4) military grade USB keys on my key ring with Windows To Go (WTG) configured on each one… but since 2015 I have written about four different devices, and I keep all of them.  Of course, they are not all always up to date… but when a new version of Windows 10 is released, I try to upgrade either some or all of them.  I skipped 1709, so I decided to take an afternoon and recreate all four keys on Windows 10 1803.

My Apricorn key worked just fine.

My Spyrus key worked just fine.

My Ironkey W300 (the one without hardware encryption) worked just fine.

My Ironkey W500 (the one with hardware encryption)… did not.

I spent a few hours trying to make it right, but to no avail.  I finally gave up (for now) deciding to come back to it later on.  And then I got an e-mail press release from Spyrus, claiming that ‘…SPYRUS Windows To Go Device Trial Pack with SEMSaaS Device Management to Replace Competitive Devices that Do Not Support Recent Windows 10 Updates’

Interesting… I decided to go through my archives and see if I would be able to create a Windows To Go installation with an earlier version of Windows.  Fortunately on one of my external hard drives I found an ISO for Windows 10 1703 Enterprise (remember that we need the Enterprise SKU for WTG!) and I spent a few minutes working on it last night.  Presto, it worked!

So the good news is: If you have an Ironkey W500 (or W700 I would think), it will still work with Windows 10 (1703 and earlier). 

The bad news is: your USB key which you spent hundreds of dollars on will only work with an operating system that will go out of support in a few months, and unless Kingston changes its policy (which seems to have been to ignore the Ironkey acquisitions and let the products die) then this is unlikely to change.

I do not know if that policy will change, or if there is something going on behind the scenes that we do not know about.  What I do know is that there is a control panel that the Ironkey toolkit installs to the install.wim file before you deploy it from the Windows To Go Control Panel, and that control panel does not seem to be compatible with Windows 10 versions later than 1703.

And so, I hate to do this, but I have to revise my previous statements.  I will give the Spyrus Workspace Pro a big thumbs up, and I will give the Apricorn Aegis Secure Key 3z a big thumbs up.  The Ironkey W500, I’m afraid, is now a do not buy