As a longtime user of windows and linux dual booted from the same disk, former user of windows to go and current user of the windows pre installation environment who uses virtualized cad programs and has moved away from bare metal windows in the last two years: It sounds like you could be moving down the wrong path.

Windows to go will absolutely be more trouble than it’s worth. I used it for years before moving to vms and the pe or just dual booting for when I absolutely had to have bare metal (as it turns out on haswell + chips this is almost never). It was a headache then and it’s only gotten worse. If you’re not completely confident that you can be your own tech support without the help of the internet and successfully force device driver installation then I don’t recommend it.

You really don’t need to worry about windows causing problems because it’s installed on the same disk as linux. The bootloader is extremely easy to repair and there are very few windows updates that caused that problem in the past.

If you will not dual boot, give serious consideration and the ol’ college try to kvm virtualization. If you have thunderbolt then the device you’re using absolutely supports the x86 extensions to make kvm work perfectly.

Again, I have done what you’re doing and I think you could be making an error by pursuing usb boot over bare metal dual boot or virtualization.