You can't upgrade native VHDs or Windows To Go sticks. The VHD limitation is listed at the bottom of this page:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd440865%28WS.10%29.aspx#BKMK_rest Upgrading the operating system booted from a VHD. If you boot from a VHD, you cannot upgrade the Windows version in the VHD to a newer version. Thanks, -Michael From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Trevor Sullivan Sent: Friday, September 20, 2013 1:38 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [MDT-OSD] Windows 8.0 to 8.1: Native VHD Boot Hey folks, I'm a little confused with what's going on around the Windows 8.1 stuff. Initially I thought this was going to be analogous to a Service Pack, since after all, it's still called Windows 8. Unfortunately, I went to upgrade my workstations when the RTM media became available, and got an error saying that I couldn't upgrade a Native VHD boot system. Has anyone else run into this problem? The Microsoft TechNet documentation for Native VHD Boot doesn't say anything about the inability to perform operating system upgrades, otherwise I probably would not have gone down that route. Of course, since the information wasn't there, I couldn't have possibly made that decision a year ago, when I initially installed Windows 8. Cheers, Trevor Sullivan I realize this document is for Windows 7, but similarly applicable: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg318048(v=ws.10).aspx Limitations The following are limitations with native VHD boot in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2: * BitLocker. Although you can place a VHD on a partition that is enabled with BitLocker(tm) Drive Encryption, it is not possible to boot from that VHD. Enabling BitLocker on the operating system within the VHD is also not a supported configuration. * Manual image creation. Creating VHD images is still a manual process. However, you can configure VHDs to align with the existing image engineering methods in your organization (creating a standard image, editing its configuration, and so on). For example, you can apply an image to a VHD with the same method as you would apply it to a hard disk drive. * No setup configuration during deployment. There is no setup support while deploying a Windows image to a VHD. That is, you can only apply an image directly to a VHD; you cannot use setup to configure the operating system to be installed on a specific partition. * Location of differencing VHDs. When using differencing VHDs, all VHD files (the parent files and the differencing VHD itself) must be stored on the same partition. * Supported editions. You can only use VHDs that contain Windows 7 Enterprise or Windows 7 Ultimate edition for native VHD boot. However, all editions of Windows Server 2008 R2 are supported. * Hibernation. You cannot hibernate an operating system that runs on a VHD. However, sleep functionality is available. * Windows Experience Index. The Windows Experience Index cannot be calculated for VHDs that are configured for native boot because of the way disk performance is measured. This means some features, such as the Aero(r) desktop experience, will not be automatically configured based on the index of the VHD's operating system. However, you can use the Winsat command-line tool to manually configure these indexes, except for the index for the disk data transfer rate.
