what are these features used for?

[mact37]

I am running W10 Pro 64 bit current version on a Sandy Bridge 2600K overclocked a bit by Asus P8Z77-xxx mobo with 32 GB ram and a Kingston 480GB PCIE "SSD"

Package is used mostly to produce printable files for books, directories, and the like, usually using antique software (Ventura Publisher. Approach database, etc) which operate better than they did on W2K or XP <G> Better memory management, I assume.

Am not a gamer. Not at all, I delete all games that try to install on my system. I am 76 yrs old, not as quick as I once was, and have been using computers since 1982, CPM then dos, mac/OS (gasp! Choke), and Windows.

All this is not to do anything but suggest I'm not a newbie overall. But in some aspects, totally a newbie.

These aspects include:

1. What do I do with a virtual drive when I'm not running a virtual machine? I have an app Daemon Tools Pro that can create a virtual drive and save it onto any of the physical drives on the system. I have not yet figured out why I would want to do that or what I could use it for that would be different from using the physical drive itself.

Can someone describe typical advantages of establishing a virtual drive for what reason?

2. Windows offers the Windows To Go which, I gather, would allow me to create a copy of my system (including installed apps?) onto a suitable USB drive which could then boot onto a different host when plugged in to the USB and machine boot sequence allowed to boot first from a usb device. (I may have that overall impression wrong, MS's docs have never been lacking ambiguity—reference the helicopter in the fog joke from years past).

Again, I'm not clear on what I could do with this. Could I, for instance, make a to go onto a SSD portable and then plug that into a client's computer and show them what I am doing using the same software and data files used on my box? That could be useful. But other than that I lack understanding. Perhaps it is an enterprise thing where dozens/hundreds of local boxes need manipulation all at the same time.

After all, who says all new things are going to be useful to everyone<G>

I know folks who haven't figured out what Windows Explorer is used for.<G>

 

[Colif]

I don't have any answers for 1st question as never used it myself.

2. Windows to go only works with enterprise & educational versions of Win 10 so you are correct in guessing it is more used by corporate situations.

This gives more info about it: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/planning/windows-to-go-frequently-asked-questions

 

[jojesa]

-Virtual drives: CD/DVD
I have a laptop without a optical drive, so I created several virtual drives to load images of CD, DVD, and Blu-ray discs. Even though they only exists virtually. I can "insert" images (ISO, BIN, IMG, UDF, etc..) into the virtual drives from the laptop hard drive by a simple double-click. After loading this images onto the virtual drives they appear like a normal CD, DVD, or Blu-ray disc.
-Virtual drives: HDD
We have computer labs where we have set up a virtual hard drive on each machine, a exact copy (clone) of the computer hard drive. Having a virtual hard drive prevents the user or any program (including malware) from making any permanent changes to the computer system. Users can do whatever they want to the system and we can just reload the virtual drive (45 seconds) and voila... back like it never happened. If by any chance there was malware, it would have simply been wiped off with the rest of the data that was on the virtual hard drive.
-Windows to Go
At work we use it on encrypted 128GB flash drives for some employees, so they can take their work anywhere and because they are cheaper to purchase than laptops. Since the drives are encrypted and they are a lot cheaper than laptops, they don't mind if you lose them.
By the way you need a Windows To Go certified USB drive, since it does not work just in any drive.

 

[Aeacus]

About Daemon Tools

As jojesa already said, you can use Daemon Tools to load images of CDs/DVDs as if there's a physical disk inside your ODD.

This program is handy for 3 reasons while providing also a drawback that can break the deal.

Benefits
1. When loading a virtual image (*.iso) from your HDD into the Daemon Tools virtual ODD, your OS sees it like you have a physical CD/DVD inside your physical ODD. It takes only a few clicks to load any virtual image to the virtual ODD and that removes the hassle of inserting/ejecting CD/DVD into and from ODD. Also, you get rid of the noise ODD makes when reading CDs/DVDs.

2. CDs/DVDs do degrade over time and to the point where your ODD can't read them at all. Also, CDs/DVDs can get damaged (scratched) which makes them hard or even impossible to read for ODD. Since virtual image (*.iso) is exact copy of CD/DVD and it's stored on your storage drive, it doesn't degrade over time.
I have made few virtual images out of some of my CDs that have degraded to the point where my ODD fails to read those CDs.

3. Since some PCs doesn't have an ODD, you can't e.g listen your favorite album on a CD in that PC. But using Daemon Tools can make it possible, provided that you first create a virtual image of that audio CD on a PC which has ODD and then move that virtual image by using USB flash drive to that PC which doesn't have ODD. Then it's just the matter of opening Daemon Tools and loading the virtual image to the virtual ODD to use it.

Drawback
1. Since each *.iso file made out of CD is usually 700MB in size and *.iso made out of DVD is usually 4GB in size, they take up a lot of storage space. This is especially hard on older hardware where you don't have much storage space at hand to store all the *.iso files.

 

[USAFRet]

1. Daemon can build and mount what used to be a CD or DVD in a file on your hard drive. And give it a regular drive letter.
Faster, quieter, easier than maintaining a stack of physical CD's.

2. Windows To Go is mostly a corporate tool. Enterprise and Edu licenses.
You can plug in a suitably built USB into any PC, and have your environment on that hardware.
Good for diagnostics, deployment, etc. Retrieving data when the internal OS is borked up.

It works, but because you are pumping the whole thing through USB, and from a flash drive...it is slooow
Just like a LinuxLive CD or USB. Good for checking out hardware, without disturbing the data on the internal drives.

Most things are not useful to everyone. Just because a thing exists, does not mean you need it or can use it.

 

[mact37]

Very interesting answers. Had never considered setting up virtual CD/DVD, but I can see the utility.

Thank you all!