How to stream Windows? (Windows in STORJ cloud?)

Is there a way now to use STORJ to keep Your Windows in cloud?

Like: you have laptop, You move from place to place, and You don’t want to keep files on Your ssd, even Windows files, (or especially windows files). But You want to easily have access to copy of Your windows so u can run it on every computer You will come in touch with just internet access?
Any ideas how to do it, like right now?

Hmm I think this is a difficult approach…
Maybe you could mount a STORJ bucket locally with something like S3FS and then install a virtual machine image on that. But I don’t think it will be very usable or performant :sweat_smile:

I think this is a great but also very complex question.

If you would like to connect to your Windows instance in a way that you type an address and the Windows desktop shows up, then you would also need computing power. At this moment, Storj is only about storage, so this is technically impossible to achieve.

However, if you would be okay with downloading a virtual machine image every time you need to access your Windows (this would also work with other operating systems), then I believe backing up VM image after you end the session seems like the way to go.

For example, you can back up and restore VirtualBox VM this way: virtual machine - Backup an entire VirtualBox VM - Super User. The image is also great for the Storj network as it’s not a small file. Unfortunately, since objects are immutable, you need to overwrite the image every time you back it up on the network. I can also see some ways to do this incrementally, even if incremental backup support isn’t built-in.

I’m going to also start out with a “this is a probably not a good idea” warning. Your windows drivers, etc., vary according to your hardware, so they’re probably not actually portable. You may have some luck, however, using a tool like rclone with Storj to syncronize a roaming user profile. Again, it’s probably not an easily accomplished idea, though I suspect you might learn a lot by trying! You’d have to run the synchronization in some way that doesn’t constantly send small changes that you don’t really need, so as to avoid unnecessary file transfer fees.

No, like a real computer’s windows, guys.
A windows 7 for example, that never ever even suspected to be treated like this :slight_smile:
So no preparation done, no virtual machine, just a normal windows installed.
Im thinking: If there was a pre windows program for computer, who could just download the newest windows version before running it? and later update that windows incrementally, someone working on such thing already?

( i mean that option would not delete windows later at all, so yea, but that would be handy to just always have Your windows copy ready to download on new computer, in case You have to drop everything and run to the bunker, coz there a rocket strike incomming like You know the situation …)

i saw AOMEI (AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition 5.8), who can clone a disk, that can be run pre-windows-launch to copy the disc, that kind of a funcionality im thinking hmmm?

The question why would you wanna do this? The loading times would be incredibly bad, Just think about how bad windows loads on a mechanical drive as it is, Then add latency and bandwidth to that your asking for a real bad time to do. I think its already possible to do since you can boot from a network its just a matter of mounting rclone and install windows to that drive.

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In your scenario, Windows is better on an external SDD to USB3 drive …

Like here:

Or maybe just create a virtual machine on one of the big cloud providers… then your windows and it’s data is safe and you can access it from wherever you want.