My goal is to have a dedicated USB for running Windows with persistent storage, so that if it would save something to the hard drive it instead saves it to the flash drive. I do not want to dual-boot or install it.

Normally I’d be able to Google this and find my own way around. However, I don’t know what this is called. Some people seem to be calling this a bootable USB, some people seem to be calling it a live USB. And of course, none of the guides I’ve seen show them using it, shutting down and unplugging it, and then demonstrating the persistent storage on the next boot. The most I’ve gathered is that windows needs to be packaged in a special way to run like this, but it seems unclear what that means for me.

So. What is this thing called? How have you gone about making a bootable/live windows flash drive with persistent storage? Any direction would be greatly appreciated