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xjohnom's avatar
xjohnom
Copper Contributor
Nov 20, 2023

Creating Windows USB Recovery Drive. 32GB Requirement

Hi, Went to create a recovery USB drive on windows 11. After a while I was prompted to insert a USB drive of at least 32GB which I duly did but the "next" button stayed greyed out. After checking my...
device management
Frederickk's avatar
Frederickk
Iron Contributor
Jan 14, 2025

This situation is really a bit crazy! The capacity of the USB label and the actual capacity are always a little "shrunk", and many people have encountered this problem. Don't worry, you don't have to change to a 64GB USB. We still have a way to solve this problem of creating a windows usb recovery drive! Here are two simple and practical solutions:

Method 1: Try to compress the size of the recovery image
System file cleanup:
You can reduce the size of the recovery image by turning off some unnecessary system options, such as unchecking "Back up system files to recovery drive".

  1. Open the "Recovery Drive" creation tool.
  2. Uncheck the "Back up system files to recovery drive" option.
  3. The recovery disk created in this way will not contain system files. Although the functions are a little less, it can save a lot of space.

Although the functions may not be complete, the basic recovery functions are still there!
Try to see if your USB can still be used, it may be enough!

Method 2: Reformat the USB to RAW or NTFS
Repartition and format:

  1. Insert the USB and open Disk Management (right-click Start menu > Disk Management).
  2. Delete the existing partition of the USB and recreate a new one.
  3. Format to NTFS or exFAT so that all space can be used as much as possible.
  4. Make sure the partition size is set to 100% used space.
  5. Clean the USB from the command line:
diskpart
list disk
select disk X  
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
exit

After doing this, the capacity of the USB may be closer to the nominal value than before, and then try to create a recovery disk.


Additional suggestions:
Microsoft is indeed a bit "idealistic", and the theoretical 32GB is actually easy to fail in actual capacity. If these two methods don't work, it is really recommended to directly use a 64GB USB, which is more convenient. After all, creating a create windows usb recovery drive is to be foolproof in the future. It is better to invest once than to have trouble again and again, right?

  • TonyC's avatar
    TonyC
    Copper Contributor
    Aug 27, 2025

    I think there is something else going on here. I tried to create a recovery drive with a 32GB drive and ran into the same problem. I needed a couple of new drives anyway so I bought some 64GB drives. No surprise, they didn't work either. They were brand new and this was their first use. I tried on 2 different computers with the same results. I checked the USB format and it was FAT32. Since it was empty anyway (except for the system files) I reformatted it as exFAT. Same result. I also tried a 150GB formatted, as exFAT, portable drive and it didn't work either. So, did MS turn this feature off but not tell anyone? As a side note, the portable drive was previously partitioned so I used disk management to delete the partitions and reformat the drive. I had left the recovery drive utility running and each time I altered the portable drive, the recovery utility detected it. At the end, I still wound up at the connect a USB drive screen with the Next button grayed out.

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