Creating Windows USB Recovery Drive. 32GB Requirement

Hi xjohnom,

It appears that the issue you're encountering is a common one related to the way storage devices are marketed versus how operating systems calculate storage space.
Manufacturers often advertise storage capacity based on the assumption that 1GB equals 1 billion bytes. However, operating systems like Windows calculate 1GB as 1,073,741,824 bytes (1024^3 bytes), resulting in a lower displayed capacity.

For creating a Windows 11 recovery drive, a USB drive with a minimum capacity of 32GB is required. If your 32GB USB drive is showing only 28.8GB of available space, it may not be recognized by the recovery tool.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Format the USB drive: Try formatting the USB drive to NTFS or FAT32.

2. Use Disk Management or DiskPart: These built-in Windows tools can help delete all partitions on the USB drive and create a new single partition that utilizes the full capacity.