How does Metro work?

[dilettante]

Windows (at least before Win8 "To Go") doesn't install as a flash-memory safe configuration.

Do you know whether Win8 To Go deals with this? Does it kill paging, indexing, background defragging, etc. that tend to tear up a default Windows install's system drive (when on flash media)? Or does it ask for space on the host system's hard drive for such things and relocate the I/Os there?

Or perhaps it relies on the same sort of "SSD Detection" heuristics that Win7 uses? Win7 auto-tweaks many of those things when it decides the system drive is "SSD" (basically random I/O tests show a certain speed I guess). Part of the tweaking is the Trim vs. delete setting that saves on flash/SSD wear. I'm not sure that had been added yet in Vista, and I'm pretty sure XP never got it.

In other words how safe is it and what does it require of the host hardware? Anyone have real expereince with it yet?


It's also an Enterprise feature, so I'm not sure what that means for post-preview Win8 for a lot of people.